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| 

iF 
The person chk is material is re- 
sponsible for i on or before the 
Latest Date st. . _low. 


Theft, mutilation and underlining of books 
are reasons for disciplinary action and may 
result in dismissal from the University. 


UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 


EDUEATION-AND SOGIAL 





OCT 03 1997 
FEB 11 thne 





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COURTESY WEYHE SALLEaiD 








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ay 
, 


OUR ENEMY 
THE CHILD 


By AGNES DE LIMA 





NEW YORK 
NEW REPUBLIC, INC. 
1926 


CoPyRIGHT, 1925, BY 
REPUBLIC PUBLISHING CO., Inc. 


Printed in the U.S.A. 


a my OS 


To SIGRID 


AGED THREE AND A HALF, 
FROM WHOM I HAVE LEARNED 
MORE ABOUT EDUCATION 
THAN FROM ANY PEDAGOGUE 
OR ANY BOOK 





CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTION 

A ScHoot Morninc 

Tue “Best” or ScHooL MornNINGS 
Some ScHoots ARE DIFFERENT . 
BEGINNING AT THE BEGINNING . 
THE Uses oF MENTAL TESTING . 
DISCOVERING THE INDIVIDUAL 
Work-Stupy-PLay SCHOOLS 
THREE DEMONSTRATION SCHOOLS 
FOLLOWING THE CHILD’s LEAD 

A CHILD’s WorRLD . ; 

A NEw EbvucaTION FOR LABOR 
FutTurE Pusiic SCHOOLS 
APPENDIX . 


125 


147 
202 


250 
261 





OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 




























: Vey 5, 
tice erg 
Forty fv 


Bah 





INTRODUCTION 


THE son of a Persian gentleman of old was 
‘rained to do three things: to shoot a bow, to ride 
1 horse and to speak the truth. Thus equipped, 
ae was counted educated, prepared to meet the 
‘elatively simple requirements of Persian society, 
t society which required little of its members be- 
yond military prowess, physical vigor and moral 
ntegrity. No doubt even then, the pedagogues 
ind wise men indulged in dogma and much argu- 
ment concerning the training of youth and his 
iltimate destiny, but the ends of education were 
it any rate clearly defined and the means for 
attaining them readily at hand. 

Not so, alas, to-day. Go through a recent set 
9f books on education and you will find as many 
lifferent conceptions of its function as there are 
writers. Shall the goal be a high degree of in- 
tellectual power, or narrow vocational fitness? 
Shall we stress the individual merely, or his fu- 
ture place in society? Shall the means be rig- 
drous routine or freedom carried to unbelievable 

Pg 


2 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


lengths? Shall we draw heavily on the classics, 
the learning of the past, or shall we be guided 
by science and present-day discoveries? Who 
knows? Who has the wisdom to answer? Is 
not one pedagogue’s guess as good as another’s? 
It would seem so, for with all their dogma and 
valiant assertion, none of them appears sure of 
his ground save when indicting his fellows. 

On one thing only are they agreed—the child, 
the cause of all their adumbrations must be de- 
stroyed, or at any rate subdued; and transformed 
from the alien, independent being he was created, 
to a creature more pliant to their purposes. The 
theory of infant damnation still animates too 
much of our educational policy. Children must 
be cured of their original sin, have the nonsense 
knocked out of them, be molded into shape, made 
fit for society. Unless it is forced upon them by 
an army of schoolmasters, truant officers and the 
hands of the law, they will eschew “education” 
and all of its works. 

Recently however there has heen a revolt 
against this cherished tradition. A number of 
schools are actually daring to put to the test an 
entirely opposite theory which holds that the natu- 
ral impulses of the child are creative, that given 
proper materials and the opportunity to use them, 
freed from dictation, the child will develop powers 


INTRODUCTION 3 


and abilities hitherto undreamed of. This does 
not mean allowing children to “run wild,” but 
rather giving them sufficient content and suffi- 
cient opportunity for self-expression fitted to the 
particular stage of growth they have reached. 
The old education—or rather the prevailing mode 
of instruction that is called education—has arbi- 
tarily collected the learning and culture of the 
ast, broken it up into water tight compartments, 
talled “subjects” and arranged these in sequential 
livisions, running from simple to complex, each 
Ogically related to the one preceding. Now as a 
matter of fact, although we do not know very 
nuch about the learning process—innumerable 
loctors’ dissertations on the subject to the con- 
,tary—we have at least discovered that it is not 
| logical affair at all, and that for all our logical 
vains children do not learn that way. In the ex- 
verimental classes directed by Miss Irwin, de- 
cribed i in Chapter IV, a number of second grade 
‘upils who had not had any arithmetic at all in 
heir first year of schooling, suddenly demanded 
| Within a month some of the brighter ones 
iad gone swiftly up to complicated work with 
tactions without the necessity of memorizing the 
aultiplication tables and the “combinations” 
which commonly precede such work. Similarly 
\eography in the newer schools is no longer con- 


} 
























4 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


fined to lessons out of a single big book filled 
with maps and lists of rivers and capitals and 
products. Youngsters below the kindergarten 
begin to “get oriented in space.” They locate 
their room in relation to others in the building, 
they locate the school in relation to other build- 
ings in the street. Later they follow the street 
to the river, they see the docks, the ferry, the 
ships. What better impetus could they have tc 
acquire not only geography facts but facts about 
economics and industry as well? That this theory 
is sound is shown by the amazing amount of in 
formation which the children in these newe! 
schools actually possess. A group of twelve-year 
old children of the Walden School who asked Dr 
Alexander Goldenweiser to give them a course i 
anthropology, discussed civilization, the inheri 
tance of acquired characteristics, free will, toten 
and taboo, social usages, the worth of custon 
and other matters usually reserved for far ma 
turer classrooms. Yet these children are not in 
tellectual prodigies, they are merely boys and girl: 
whose natural curiosities have not been stifled an 
whose will-to-think has not been broken. 

Now in order to think, one cannot sit passivel: 
by and absorb knowledge from the lips of ; 
teacher. A child does not learn to walk by hav 
ing some grown-up tell him how to do it, by bein: 


l 
INTRODUCTION 5 
! 


given a technical description of the motor co- 
ordination involved in the act. When he is ready 
00 walk, he teaches himself through trial and 
j3tror, bumps and falls, how to balance and how 
0 propel one foot before the other. And so in 
these newer schools, every opportunity is given 
\30 children to discover things for themselves. 
{ne of the most certain ways of achieving this 
{,8 to provide them plenty of materials with which 
hey can reconstruct and vivify past experiences 
Jind thus lay a basis for further inquiry. Nothing 
jmdeed more obviously distinguishes the old 
\ichools from the new than this use of materials. 


: the traditional school, the classrooms are a 












jarren waste of desks and blackboards, and ma- 
erials confined to paper, pencils and books. Even 
;m the kindergarten the materials are limited and 
heir use proscribed. In the newer schools how- 





}we surrounded with a great variety of things to 
lo with—blocks, paints, crayons, weaving, clay, 
{ and, lumber, boats, printing presses, typewriters, 
cience apparatus, stage sets, sewing machines, 
lectrical appliances, every manner of musical in- 
| trument—the list of materials in one descriptive 
ook on experimental practice covers many para- 
jttaphs of close type. Books take their rightful 
lace among the materials, as sources of informa- 







— 


‘ver, the children even up to the highest grades | 


6 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


tion to supplement first hand experiences, and as 
rich reference sources. 

Now what happens when a child is not dic- 
tated to and is set down with materials such as 
these? If he is emotionally untrammeled and 
physically sound so that he can function normally, 
it is safe to say that his use of materials will be 
creative. Watch a two-year-old piling his blocks, 
If some adult has not ruined his first efforts by 
stupidly showing him how, he quite uncannily 
arranges them in designs having no little degree 
of balance and proportion. Leave a little child 
alone with paints or crayons and large sheets of 
paper and after a period of random smearing, he 
will begin to draw amazing things, astonishing 
both in line and color. Even if his products have 
no meaning for a grown person, they have mean- 
ing to him as a child. A three-year-old girl re- 
cently showed a visitor a drawing she had made 
of aman. “Oh,” exclaimed the visitor, “what a 
funny man, he’s got only one leg.” The child 
flushed under the criticism, but luckily stood her 
ground, “Well, that’s the kind of man he is!” she 
replied. | 

To be sure the newer schools are facing in- 
numerable unsolved problems. Not the least of 
these is the common human failing of substitut- 
ing—in the name of freedom—merely another 


INTRODUCTION 7 


kind of tyranny for the old. Many of the newer 
institutions tend to regard some sociological or 
psychological principle as more sacred than the 
child. In many it is the great abstraction of the 
future society which is set above ol other con- 
sideration; the curriculum is “socialized,” all 
efforts are bent to making the child an intelligent 
‘participant in a future social democracy. To this 
end, the pupil is given endless material bearing 
on the mechanics of modern industry and gov- 
ernment—a sort of glorified civics—calculated 
to turn him into a kind of socialized robot who 
will infallibly codperate smoothly and efficiently 
with his fellows. Other advocates of “freedom” 
are busy instilling habits in mere toddlers and 
runabouts, habits which may or may not limit 
‘spontaneity, independence and initiative. Others 
are magnifying the bogey of “emotional fixation” 
and “complexes” to absurd proportions. Some of 
these dangers are specifically referred to in the 
present discussion. 

While these shortcomings are serious and may 
become more so as experimental schools multiply 
in number, the great battle is still to be won for 
even a modicum of free activity in the ordinary 
school. While informality in the classroom is on 
the increase the great majority of children are 
still being made the victims of a repressive régime 


| 


8 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


too much like the one described in the first chap- 
ters. Few public schools have advanced as far 
as such conservative demonstration schools as the 
Horace Mann and Ethical Culture Schools, which 
are described in Chapter IX. The valuable con- 
tributions to scientific curriculum making worked 
out by the Lincoln School have scarcely been 


a ee 


heard of by the rank and file of teachers through- | 


out the country. The Gary and Dalton schools 


are making headway but with painful slowness, | 
considering how easily they may be adapted to | 


public school conditions. In only a few instances 
have public school classes been established—and 
they are usually short lived—which experiment 
radically along the lines suggested by such insti~ 
tutions as the City and Country, and the Walden 
Schools in New York City. 


Yet there is a stirring in the educational world. | 


Everywhere there is evidence of a profound and | 


growing dissatisfaction with the existing educa- | 
tional order. When Mr. Israel Zangwill an- | 
nounced that America is the best half educated | 
nation in the world, his remarks were greeted with | 
a chorus of approval. Knocking our schools and | 
the products of our schools will “get a hand” not | 
only from the gallery of disgruntled proletarians, | 
but from the center of the house made up of solid | 


i 
' 


INTRODUCTION 9 


business men, professional workers and the saving 
remnant of the blue stocking clan. 

Most thoughtful teachers have felt the force 
of public school criticism for years. Many have 
resisted inwardly, but have felt that open revolt 
was futile. Others have attempted change, but 
lacking the necessary technique or scientific knowl- 
edge or sufficient imagination have slipped back 
into old ways, because old ways are easy and safe 
and well known. To-day, however, there exists 
not only a growing store of scientific information 
and of pedagogical discovery, but the centers, both 
public and private where the newer educational 
theories are being put to the test, are growing in 
number and influence. The Teachers’ Union in 
New York City has prepared an ambitious pro- 
posal for establishing such an experiment station 
within the public school system itself. Over a 
thousand public school teachers in the metropolis 
belong to a society for the experimental study of 
education. The sessions of this organization, 
while still confined too narrowly to technical prob- 
lems of measurement, or of pedagogy, are increas- 
ingly devoted to consideration of more funda- 
mental educational reform. Schools of education 
of universities and research bureaus in city school 
systems, while by no means committed to the lib- 


10 | OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


eralizing principles of the more radical experi- 
mental centers, are giving them thoughtful atten- 
tion. Moreover the lay public is showing -a 
growing interest in educational progress. The 
Progressive Education Association has begun 
the publication of a notable laymen’s quarterly, 
whose gifted editor is Miss Gertrude Hartman. 
Finally, organized labor, originally responsible for 
the first great educational experiment—the estab- 
lishment for the first time anywhere of a system 
of free and universal education,—is again taking 
a hand in educational reform. Not only has labor 
taken vigorous steps to improve and expand the 
range of educational opportunities for adults, but 
more recently working people, both organized 
and unorganized, have taken an aggressive atti- 
tude in regard to elementary instruction, This 
attitude has been the more significant, because it 


has been concerned not with questions of extend- | 


ing the school age, or the school year, nor with 
matters relating to narrow vocational training. 
Labor is actually putting the question, “What op- 
portunities are the schools giving our children to 


become free creative personalities?” This ques- | 
tion appears to the workingman to be of supreme | 


importance, for without a generation of free and 
creative individuals, the ends and aims of the 
organized labor movement can never be achieved. 





INTRODUCTION II 


The author of the present volume has spent 
“many years visiting and “surveying” schools of 
the traditional type. More recently she devoted 
a year to studying the specific experiments de- 
scribed in these pages. Chapters II, III and XII 
appeared as articles in the New Republic, and 
parts of others were published in the New Re- 
public and the Nation. Thanks are therefore due 
to the editors of these magazines for permission 
to reprint this material. 


II 
A SCHOOL MORNING 


“Sir up tall—every one of you!’ commanded 
the teacher. 

Forty-six boys, ranging in age from nine to 
twelve, their arms crossed behind them, chests 
swelled to bursting, strained themselves against 
the backs of their desks. 

The teacher regarded them fixedly until the last 
child was frozen into immobility. 

“Arithmetic books—out!” At the signal, 
forty-six books appeared on the desks. 


“Begin at the top of page 47 and work | 
examples 12, 13, 14 and 15. All except you, | 
Nathan, and you, Davis, and you, Paul. You | 
three go to the board and write down what I tell | 


you.” 


“These dull fellows need a little extra drill,” 
declared the teacher in a loud aside to the visitor. 


“I always say the dull child has as much right 
to be educated as the smart one. That means 
giving him a hand once in a while. Now then, 
boys, clear the board. Put down six million, 


12 


A SCHOOL MORNING 13 


three hundred and twenty-seven thousand, five 
hundred and forty-two. Divide by nine hundred 
and fifteen. Nathan, where are your eyes?” 

The teacher’s voice was hard and metallic and 
her face lined with a multitude of little seams of 
nervous irritation. Police duty is hard work, 
when it means keeping forty-six children caged 
‘and immovable in a tiny room five hours a day, 
five days a week for ten months a year. 

For caged and immovable they were in a space 
measuring certainly not more than fifteen by 
thirty feet, a space completely filled by cumber- 
some desks at which the children sat, two and 
often three to a seat. Blackboards filled the front 
and one side wall, a clothes closet ran across the 
rear, and windows were on the remaining side. A 
few stereotyped drawings of birds labeled “Bird 
Week” were pinned to the closet doors and three 
posters, one of a truck, one of a street car and 
the third of an ambulance, all marked “Safety 
First!’ surmounted a blackboard. In one corner 
hung a chart showing liquid measure. Next to it 
was a small supply chest. On the teacher’s desk 
drooped three peonies at the point of disintegra- 
tion. On the board in neat script were the letters 
p-e-o-n-y. 

This was actually all there was in the room. In 
this cramped and arid space was not one thing to 


14 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


call forth the slightest creative impulse of the 
children who were doomed by law to spend the 
sunniest hours of their lives there. All they 
could do was to sit up rigid and “tall,” while the 
teacher doled out irrelevant and uninviting bits 
of knowledge in the name of “education.” 

The worst of it was that four years of this kind 
of treatment had had its deadly effect on the 
children. They sat there, this spring morning, 
sunk in apathy, not one of them by even so much 
as a shuffle venturing to rebel openly against the 
accustomed régime. One boy, to be sure, instead 
of working his sums, was, under cover of his 
hand, scribbling a series of ciphers across his 
paper, and another was stealthily watching the 
meaningless performance in awed fascination. 
The three “dullards” at the board went through 
the drill with perfect precision. It was without 
doubt as good a way of passing the time as any 
other. 

At the end of a quarter of an hour the teacher 
ordered the arithmetic papers to be collected and 
then announced with a show of liveliness that the 
class would write a composition about a trip to 
Central Park planned for the morrow. 

The children brightened visibly. Here was a 
real event worth discussing. They waited cau- 
tiously however for directions as to how to pro- 


A SCHOOL MORNING 15 


seed to discuss it. The teacher wrote the head- 
ng on the board: ‘ 

“A trip to Central Park.” 

“Put that down,” she commanded. Forty-six 
rencils wrote as a unit. Then the children waited 
ain. 

_ “Next, write in your own words all the things 
Miss Perkins has told you not to do on that trip.” 
Not a child moved. 

“Oh, come,” urged Miss Perkins, “you remem- 
der what those things are. Tell us one, Nathan.” 

“Not to knock no papers on the floor.” 

“You mean, to throw no papers on the grass. 
Yes, we must leave everything orderly. What 
‘Ise, Benjamin?” 

“Please, we should listen on your whistle and 
‘ome right back.” 

“Yes, nobody is to go beyond the sound of my 
whistle, and the moment I blow it, you must re- 
urn instantly.” 

It was no doubt natural that Miss Perkins 
hould be concerned at the prospect of conducting 
orty-six East Side youngsters to Central Park 
ind back. All but one, she explained, had never 
een there in their lives, and all but three had 
lever ridden in a street car before. Small wonder 
hat she suggested a composition full of prohibi- 
ions. 


16 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


After a sufficient number of these negative re 
minders had been given, the children set abou 
writing them down. The task seemed more con 
genial than the previous one. To discuss a rea 
coming event, even in the negative, was far mor: 
agreeable to the children than to work arithmeti 
sums in vacuo. 

The writing period was soon over, however 
and the readers were ordered out. 

“Turn to page 62,” commanded Miss Perkins 
“and read, sentence about.” 

The class relapsed into its former apathy. I 
had apparently read the story of “Iduna and th 
Golden Apples” many times before, and the them: 
was worn threadbare. The children rose mechani 
cally and read the sentences in shrill, laborec 
tones, chopping off each word with meaning. 
less emphasis. A number yawned and squirmec 
miserably. 

Miss Perkins seemed as aware as any one els¢ 
of the futility of the performance. Still, wa: 
she not as trapped as the children? Her time 
table called for so many minutes of reading dail} 
and the course of study prescribed this particulai 
reader. She must drive relentlessly ahead, ir 
appearance only more free than the driven, Shé¢ 
scanned her watch nervously. 

“Time for music,” she announced. 





A SCHOOL MORNING 17 


The class shuffled the readers out of sight and 
at woodenly erect. 

“Sit up tall,” Miss Perkins said for the twen- 
eth time that morning. “Make your mouths nice 
nd round.” She drew a little pipe from her 
ocket and blew “A.” 
“La-a, everybody!” 
irough the air. 

The class rose to its feet. 

“Now then—‘Happy School Days.’ Sing as if 
du meant it. Wake up, can’t you? Some of you 
0k only half alive. Remember, we must sing 
ur best on Commencement Day.” 

Even so, the song dragged miserably. 

“We'll try, ‘Watchman, What of the Night?’ 
ext.” The children responded drearily. 

“Ready, sit!” ordered Miss Perkins. The class 
it. | 

“Patrick, let us hear you recite, ‘Robert of 
incoln.’ ” 

Patrick, a wan, gaunt lad with tousled hair and 
splotched face, came up front. He went 

trough the poem at a tremendous speed, intensely 

iger to get the business over with. 

“Peter, recite the same poem. Try to give it 

little more expression.” 

Peter’s notion of “expression” was to recite 
‘tremely slowly with special emphasis upon the 


Her right arm wagged 


18 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


lines, “Bobolink, bobolink, spink, spank, spink.” 
“Now, everybody, the poem over again.” 
The class repeated the poem in utter indiffer- 
ence. 
“Next, ‘The Mountain and the Squirrel,’ 
John!” Miss Perkins moved to the side of the 
room. Half a dozen heads turned towards her. 
“All those facing the side of the room, face 
front!’ she ordered peremptorily. “Go on, 
John.” 
“One more—‘The Fountain’—Thomas.”’ 
Thomas, thin and undersized, one eye twitching 
nervously, shrieked the verses in his tense treble. 
The contrast was cruel between his misshapen 
little frame and the words of the poem. “In-to 
the sun-shine full of delight...” he halted 
miserably. : 
“Go ahead,” prodded Miss Perkins. Thomas 
stood his ground a moment in a desperate search 
for the next line, then crumpled into his place. _ 
“Next boy!” “Next boy” began the poem at 
the beginning and ran it through successfully. 
“Monitors, open the windows!’ | 
A two-minute drill followed, the children re- 
sponding with exact military precision to the 
orders given. Every iota of expression had left 
their faces. Blankly, almost blindly they wheeled 
from left to right and from right back to left. 











A SCHOOL MORNING 19 


“hey seemed in no wise like children but like 
rooden dolls moved by a master hand. 
_ “Chests up—in—out! Arms upward stretch 
-higher—down! Knees—bend! Left—turn— 
tep! Form lines for marching. About face! 
fark time—halt! Forward march—halt! Run 
1 place—halt! Forward march—halt! Breathe 
1—out! Left—turn—to your places, step! 
ae!” 

The class sat. 
' Miss Perkins examined them critically “Now 
iat we are all freshened up and have our wits 
bout us, let us try . . . the boys who have pens 
i their hands, put them down instantly! .. . let 
s try a spelling match.” 
This was obviously for the visitor’s benefit. 
‘he children smiled feebly. ‘Henry, choose for 
ne side; Patrick, for the other. Be quick.” 
_The spelling match was executed without the 
ightest show of animation. The class seemed 
ast any possibility of life. But as the big noon 
all cut through the building, a shiver of expec- 
incy went over the room. The door opened and 
child entered with a note for Miss Perkins. In- 
antly a score of heads craned down the hall and 
ae boy involuntarily thrust his foot into the aisle 
. . in the direction of freedom. 
| “John!”’ snapped Miss Perkins, “you may stay 


20 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


after class for fifteen minutes.” She began t 
count slowly, the signal for the children to ge 
their wraps. Each row rose in turn, faced abou 
and marched in dead silence to the clothes closet 
got their wraps and returned to their seats. Th: 
other rows waited in an agony of suspense 
When every one had hats and coats, Miss Perkin 
gave the signal to rise. All, save the luckles: 
John, fell into line and marched to the door. : 

“We shall stand here until every head is still,’ 
announced Miss Perkins. “The boy who has hi 
elbows up, put them down.” There was anothe: 
half minute of anguished immobility. “Gooc 
morning, boys,” said Miss Perkins finally. 

“Good morning, Miss Perkins!” came the reply 
in a roar of spontaneity, the only sincere ai | 
of the morning. 

Miss Perkins watched the line file down the hal 
where it was met by other lines, each presidec 
over by its glaring guardian. Only at the down: 
stairs door was vigilance relaxed, when the chil: 
dren burst out into the free air of the streets like 


so many exploding shells.* 





1The foregoing is an exact transmission of what took 
place during a visit to a fourth grade class in a New York 
public school last spring. Both school and class were se- 
lected at random, the visitor merely choosing the first schoo’ 
she happened to come across after going into an unfamiliar 
part of town. 





Iil 
ae BEST” OF SCHOOL. MORNINGS? 


_To begin with, Mrs. Spencer was warm and 
uman. She loved her work, she loved the chil- 
ren. You could tell that at once from the way 
ae was addressing the new little boy from Ohio, 
utting him at his ease, wording the question in 


1In the present instance an attempt has been made to 
sport the “best” of ordinary school mornings—experimental 
asses excepted. The principal of the school visited is one 
f the most enlightened and progressive men in the New 
‘ork system. His school and his methods have received fre- 
gent and well deserved public commendation. The writer 
sked and received permission to spend the morning with 
‘S very best teacher of a fourth grade. 

There may be better “best” teachers in the system, but it 
worth while to ask just how much in the way of creative 
mperience can be afforded to children by any teacher, no 
atter how technically skilled or graciously human, who 
iffers under a fixed course of study, an overcrowded class, 
room void of any materials save blackboards, desks and 
»oks, and the tradition of the teacher as the active, direct- 
g agent, and of the pupils as the docile and receptive ones. 
That the class teachers themselves are aware of the dif- 
culties of the job is shown by the remarkable response to 
ie recent request of Supt. Wm. J. O’Shea of New York 
ity that they indicate changes needed in the course of study 
id in methods of instruction. That they are more aware 
{ the necessity for change than are their superiors is plain 
‘om the returns from one district, whose superintendent 
ned in more than 500 changes suggested by his teachers, 
uly two of which had his endorsement. 


21 


22 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


denominate numbers with just the right note of 
apology in her tone so that he might not think 
New York was talking down to him. 

And the children loved her. They were will- 
ing in their responses, even the “Pest,” a well 
grown lad of nine who sat right under Mrs. 
Spencer’s desk, and did extremely well under the 
circumstances. : 

The circumstances of course were the necessity 
of sitting as docilely as possible in one seat for 
hours at a time and letting Mrs. Spencer assign 
the work, and not only assign it, but for the most 
part do all the talking about it and all the deciding 
as to when one job should end and another begin. 

To be sure, she did it all in the friendliest way 
imaginable, with a good deal of understanding of 
the willingness of children to cooperate in almost 
any enterprise if only you assume that they will. 

The room itself was friendly, large and sunny, 
with big windows to the rear and the left, giving 
one a wide expanse of sky and a spreading city 
below. If forty-two active, restless boys and girls 
must perforce sit quietly by the hour and listen te 
abstractions, they could scarce have chosen a moré 
cheerful place. There were flowering plants in 
boxes at the windows, and the lower sashes of thé 
windows were gay with silhouette drawings mad¢ 
by the children. The same gay frieze of birds 





THE “BEST” OF SCHOOL MORNINGS 23 


and black cats ran over the clothes closet whose 
loors were covered with a quantity of little prints 
ind placards: “factors,” “units,” “numerator,” 
“denominator,” “mixed number.” On the supply 
iloset doors were the Declaration of Independ- 
mee, a lengthy notice in fine print from the 
American Legion, concerning Our Flag—How to 
Jisplay It; How to Respect It, and the roll of 
ocal members of the American Junior Red Cross. 
Jn a blackboard was written, “I shall pass 
hrough this world but once. Any good thing 
herefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can 
how to any human being, let me do it now. Let 
ne not defer it, nor neglect it, for I shall not 
lass this way again.” Over the front board was 
nother placard, “Self Control.” 

This was evidently the class slogan, for every 
low and again Mrs. Spencer would pause and 
‘oint to it half humorously, “Up nice and straight 
nd tall, everybody,” her voice would be ever so 
‘ood-natured, “and let’s all of us exercise—” 
_“Self-control!’ the class would answer with 
qual good humor. 

_ An arithmetic lesson was beginning as we en- 
red. Mrs. Spencer turned from the Ohio boy 
2a little miss who sat staring at her finished sum 
nth lines of deep worry in her face. 

“Good for you, Helen. That’s just right— 


| 
| 


24 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


you didn’t know you were so smart.’’ Helen’s 
look of worry dissolved into a smile. 

“Little helpers to the board,’ Mrs. Spencer an- 
nounced, “George, Edith, Fred, Gertrude, each 
take two children who need helping.” A dozen 
children ranged themselves around the room 
grouped in threes. “Begin at page IOI in your) 
books, and start with the first example. You 
others in your seats, begin at page 115, example 
4. Yes, you may talk to one another about your 
work,”’ A little buzz ran over the room. 

There were two grades in the class, Mrs. Spen- 
cer explained to the visitor, fifteen bright chil- 
dren from 4a and twenty-seven dull ones from 4b. 
Both groups were now ready to enter 5a, the 
bright pupils having done two terms’ work in 
one. Mrs. Spencer was using these bright chil- 
dren as coaches for the slower ones. The plan 
worked admirably, and gave her a chance to pay 
more individual attention to those not being 
coached. It was impossible to give much indi- 
vidual help when one had forty-two children at 
once. Many of them were serious problems, sent 
to her because she knew how to deal with them. 
She never nagged, but tried instead to understand | 
what lay behind a child’s behavior. ' } 

She consulted her watch. “The coaching pe- 
riod is over,” she announced. “To your seats.” 


THE “BEST” OF SCHOOL MORNINGS 25 


“There is one example we all need to talk 
about,” she said, as the children settled them- 
selves. “Thirty-seven and one-half minus twen- 
ty-five and one-fifth.” She wrote it on the board. 
“Who can give me the least common denomina- 
tor? Fanny? I called on you because you 
weren't paying attention. Well, then, Sam, you 
tell us. Ten, that’s right. Now then, Sam, what 
do we—oh, I hope you know it—what do we do 
next?” But Sam stood helplessly at sea. A girl 
suggested the next step. 

“Oh, dear,’ sighed Mrs. Spencer, “‘there’s a 
girl here named Sam.” But for all the help 
proffered, Sam was unable to complete the sum 
without prodigious prodding. 

_ “The arithmetic period is over. Keep your 
papers in your books. Your homework is ex- 
ample 2 on page 114: 117,799 divided by 3,648. 
How do we prove an example in division? We 
mult is 

“Multiply the divisor by the quotient,” said 
the class in unison. 

“We are smart to-day. Stephen, what seems 
to be the trouble?” 

' Stephen, the “Pest,” jerked his head back at 
the girl behind him. “She keeps sticking her 
feet into my back,” he complained. 

“Oh, dear, how dreadful! Such little tiny 


| 





: 
| 
. 
: 
! 


26 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


feet going right through a big thick bench right 
into your big strong back! I suppose you are 
too seriously hurt to go to Mr. Hazen’s room 
and fetch me the map of Asia. You're not? 
Well, and you, David, go and get the map of 
Europe from Miss Flynn.” Both boys had 
reached the door as though shot from a gun. 
“Remember to say ‘Please.’” Mrs. Spencer 
turned to the class. “Always be——’” 

“Polite,” they responded. 

“Yes, always be polite, it’s worth while, you'll 
find. Up tall—stretch up—deep breath—out— 
that’s better. While we’re waiting for the maps, 
I want Sarah, George, Walter and Dominick to 
come up front and recite each a verse of ‘Wood- 
man, Spare That Tree!’ ” 

The children ran through the poem with no 
particular circumstance, save for Sarah, a heavy 
fat girl who intoned the third stanza with deep 
emotion. 

“Sarah, you were just wonderful!” applauded 
Mrs. Spencer. “You recited with so much ex- 
pression, it made my heart go pitta-pat. 

“Take out your geographies, and turn to the 
map of Asia. Page 185. 

“Henry, what is Asia?’ 

“Asia—Asia—’”’ stammered the uncertain 
Henry. 


THE “BEST” OF SCHOOL MORNINGS 27 


“Class ?” 

“Asia is a continent.” 

“Well, what is the meaning of continent, 
Elsie?” 

“A continent is the largest division of land.” 

“Right, when I talk about a continent, what 
do I mean? I mean land.” 
Stephen returned with the map of Asia and 
swung it deftly into place over the board. He 
lingered over the job of straightening it, hating 
to relinquish even so slight an activity for the 
detestable business of sitting still. Ore won- 
dered how much he would have been regarded as 
a “Pest” if he might have ranged at will through 
a science laboratory, or spent his excess energies 
in a school carpentry shop or printing room in- 
stead of spending hours at a desk. 
) “Thank you, Stephen, it looks fine. Take the 
pointer, and show us the coast-line. Not so 
fast. What do I mean by coast-line? Right. 
-And from the kind of coast-line that Asia has, 
what do you think Asia is good for? T’Il ask 
Edna to answer me. To your seat, Stephen.” 

The questions ran on with their perfunctory 
answers. “Tell me what you can about the ex- 
‘treme northern part. The coldest part of the 
world. Right. What about this,” pointing to 
the Tropic of Cancer. “Cold,” said one child, 


/ 
: 


28 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


“Hot,” said another. “Who said ‘Hot’? He 
was right. Point to the Ural Mountains.” Three 
children tried it in vain. For all Mrs. Spen- 
cer’s warmth and zeal, the class could not find 
Asia interesting. | 
“Hang Asia over the back board and we'll re- . 
view Europe.” At least six boys leaped from 
their seats to remove the map of Asia and hang | 
Europe in its place. ay 
“T want the Caucasian Mountains, I want the 
Bay of Biscay. Name five countries of Europe. | 
.’? But even Europe in review had no at- | 
tractions. Mrs. Spencer looked at her watch | 
again. 7 
“Why, it’s way past time for crackers and | 
milk.’ A dozen hands waved wildly. Two boys 
were selected to fetch the milk. | 
“While we’re waiting, who can tell me the 
name of that pretty little picture over there?” 
Mrs. Spencer indicated a print. “Dance of the | 
Nymphs.’ Right, Sarah.” | 
“Who remembers the artist?’ She wrote! 
Corot on the board. J 
“What hour of the day is weal depicted in : 
his pictures? Early morning or twilight. And | 
what is there about Corot’s pictures that makes 
them great? Every great artist, children, has | 





THE “BEST” OF SCHOOL MORNINGS 29 


‘something about his pictures that makes them 
great. And Corot’s is what?” 

_ “He leaves something to your imagination,” 
declared Sarah. 

_ “Right,” affirmed Mrs. Spencer. “Now, we 
have only five minutes for crackers and milk. 
“We'll have to hurry,” Mrs. Spencer appeared 
to regret the end of recess as much as any one, 
“but it’s time for writing. Monitors pass the 
papers. Every one up, nice and straight and tall, 
and do your very best. Write your names. 
Don’t forget to end with an upward stroke. Two 
or three forgot about the upward stroke last time. 
It’s just as bad as coming to school with your 
clothes unbuttoned or your necktie off. Write 
these words.” 

She wrote a number of words on the board: 
mountain, camp, August, glove, song, thumb, it- 
self. 

“Do your very best. We have only a week or 
two more before promotion day.” A shiver ran 
over the class. Two or three girls covered their 
faces with their hands. 

Mrs. Spencer erased the words. “Who can 
spell August? John?” 

“August: A-u-g-u-s-t, August,” said John 
quickly, 











30 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


“What was wrong? Dora?” 

“August: capital A-u-g-u-s-t, August,” de- 
clared Dora. 

“Right. Time for reading. And we are go- 
ing to exchange readers with Miss Flynn’s class.” 
There were little murmurs of delight. “So we 
shan’t use our own readers to-day, but instead, 
let’s act out one of the stories. Let’s do the Mad 
Tea Party. Who remembers it best?’ Four 
children were chosen. 

The playlet went off admirably, the little girl 
who impersonated Alice, looking exactly like her. 

“Fine. You were all good,’ Mrs. Spencer de- 
clared. “Now we'll have a language game. Why 
do we have language games?” 

Nobody appeared to know. “To teach us to 
speak correct English,” said Mrs. Spencer, “al- 
ways know the reason, children, for what you 
do. Now I shan’t select anybody who isn’t sit- 
ting up very nice and tall and straight. And look 
here, young man, when I need any assistance from: 
you Dll ask for it. Too many feet sticking out 
in this aisle. Under your desks. That’s right. 
We'll play the ‘It Is game. Edna, you may 
choose.” 

All the children hid their faces in their hands, 
while Edna flew down the aisle, touching this 
one and that. The “Pest” squirmed miserably. 





THE “BEST” OF SCHOOL MORNINGS 31 


_ Another child called the names. As each child 
‘was called, he rose and answered, “No, it was 
not I whom the Fairy touched,” or “Yes” as 
“he case might be. The ‘Pest’ extended his arms 
n utter disgust. 

“Stephen,” Mrs. Spencer was quite amicable, 
“I need change for three dollars in dimes to 
settle our arrangements for seeing Peter Pan. 
You just run to your father’s store and get them 
or me.” Stephen immediately straightened up 
ind left the room with an air of solemn respon- 
sibility. 

“We'll have a drill game on the word bring,” 
Mrs. Spencer told the class. 

The game ended the morning. The children 

sat passively enough as the successive gongs 
‘ounded. They were well-trained and they knew 
hat Mrs. Spencer wanted things to go through in 
order. 
' “We'll have the girls choose the best looking 
voy to escort our visitor back to the principal’s 
iffice, ” said Mrs. SpenCer. “And we hope she 
‘as enjoyed her morning.” 


} 


| 





IV 
SOME SCHOOLS ARE DIFFERENT 
I 


ACCORDING to a widely current doctrine, there 
is and must always be a division of labor be- 
tween the public and the private schools. The 
private school may undertake extended experi- 
ments. It is free, within wide limits to teach 
such subjects as seem promising, by such meth- 
ods as appear hopeful. The public school, be- 
ing essentially bureaucratic, may adopt only the 
subjects and methods that seem to have a virtual 
certainty of success. The function of the private 
school, according to this view, is to probe all 
things. That of the public school is to hold fast 
that which is good, or if not good, at least gen- 
erally acceptable. 

There is much justice in these observations. 
Yet it will not do to press too far the distinction 
between private and public school. The former 
is not so free nor the latter so bureaucratic as 
we usually assume. The public schools, in spite 

32 


SOME SCHOOLS ARE DIFFERENT a9 


£ the handicaps of inadequate staff, congested 
ildings, political interference, do occasionally 
ispond to the spirit of educational progress. In 
Tew York City, where these handicaps are natu- 
ally more serious than in smaller cities we never- 
aeless find significant educational experiments, 
artly under direct official supervision and guid- 
‘ace, and partly with the encouragement and ap- 
‘oval of the supervisory staff. These experi- 
tents range in thoroughness from mere regrad- 
ig and regrouping of children to radical de- 
‘artures from that most sacred of all school tra- 
‘itions—the course of study. 

' One of the most remarkable of educational ex- 
eriments is now being carried through by Miss 
“lisabeth Irwin, under joint public and private 
‘uspices. Miss Irwin herself is employed by 
ae Public Education Association, but her staff, 
‘xcept the teacher of music, are public school 
‘sachers, and the classes are officially a part of 
"blic School 61, and under the supervision of 
fhe Department of Education. Dr. George M. 
%arker of the Psychiatrist Research Foundation 
‘nd three associates are also connected with the 
“xperiment. 

' The work started February, 1923, with one 
‘undred children who had attended school for one 
erm. They are now ending their third year and 











: 


34 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


their number will be augmented each term by 
another group of beginners. It is Miss Irwin’s 
hope to carry these children up to the junior high 
school, adding new children to fill the lower grades 
each term. Her classes are of three types: bright, 
normal, and dull-normal. A class for neurotic 
children was dropped after the second year. 
Mental defectives are excluded, since they are 
already fairly well provided for in the public 
schools. Preliminary psychological and psychia- 
tric examinations determine in what class each 
child enters. He is later shifted from one group 
to another as his needs require. 

Except for the normal class, Miss Irwin has 
greatly reduced the scope of formal work in the 
three R’s. It is her belief that children at this 
age—between six and nine—require physical ex- 
ercise, a chance to develop the larger muscles, 
sensory training in the free use of appropriate 
materials, clay, wood, sand, color, weaving, plants: 
and the like. She has got rid of immovable school 
desks, blackboards, etc. In the beginners’ room, 
she has provided little wicker easy chairs, tables 
suited to small statures, work-benches, a type: 
writer, low shelves containing playthings, flowers | 
and even a miniature zoo. | 

This intimate and natural atmosphere i is in Miss) 
Irwin’s opinion a first requisite in education. The) 








SOME SCHOOLS ARE DIFFERENT 35 


hild, she says enters school from an intensely 
ersonal background. Everything up to that 
ime has been done in response to appeals from 
mamma” or “papa.” At the age of six or seven 
e dashes into a great public building with two 
rt three thousand other children. “He is fitted 
ito a slit between a bench and a desk in a room 
rith fifty others. He must stand up and sit down 
ith them upon command. He learns to shout in 
lorus certain responses to certain symbols on 
ie blackboard. . . . When a bell rings he goes 
1; when two bells ring, he goes out. If the bells 
ing long and loud and unexpectedly, he soon 
‘arns that that is a fire-drill and everybody hur- 
es out on the street and the principal shouts 
lings to the teacher. So this is school . . .”? 

In contrast, Miss Irwin’s classrooms are places 
here children are given an opportunity to gain 
«perience at first hand, freely and naturally. 
here is no need she thinks of hurrying along 
te teaching of symbols. Any normal child will 
arn to read before he is ten, if he is exposed 
» books by those who value them. There is no 
3e torturing an imaginative child of six or seven 
ith a dull reading routine. No child, however, 
too young to begin the study of literature. 


1“Personal Education,” by Elisabeth Irwin, The New Re- 
‘blic, Educational Section, Nov. 12, 1924. 


36 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


“Mother Goose rhymes, folk tales, stories 0! 
every day life begin to interest a child during hi: 
second year and from then on he will take al 
he can get. Because he is not taught reading a’ 
an early age is no reason to skimp his fund o! 
imaginative material.”* Similarly with writ 
ing. In Miss Irwin’s opinion, which she hold: 
in common with many other educators and psy 
chologists, nothing is gained and very much {| 
lost by insistence on the child’s learning to writ 
at an early age. No child under eight should bi 
expected to form letters less than a foot high 
and even then no high standard of perfectior 
should be imposed. The nerve strain is to¢ 
severe. 

Yet as they become necessary, the three R’ 
are adequately learned. Miss Irwin tells a stor) 
of a mother who was distressed because her sevet 
years old George could not write, although hi 
had been in school a term and a half. The fam 
ily was about to move uptown, and the mothe! 
feared for George’s standing in a traditiona 
school. “Never mind, we’ll teach him to writ 
before you move,” Miss Irwin assured her. “Bu 
we go next Monday,” moaned the mother. “Weil 
teach him,” Miss Irwin repeated. And they dic 


2“Fitting the School to the Child,” by Elisabeth Tews 
and Louis Marks, The Macmillan Company, 1924. t 
| 
j 


| 


SOME SCHOOLS ARE DIFFERENT a7 
-in two days! Mrs. Marietta Johnson has 
poken of children’s “bursting into literacy.” 
omething of the sort happened to this boy. 

_ The daily program in Miss Irwin’s rooms bears 
ttle resemblance to that of the traditional school. 
‘here is none of that quick regimentation of chil- 
ten into docile, silent rows a few moments after 
te morning bell has sounded. It is to be doubted 
hether Miss Irwin’s children ever conventionally 
settle down.” In a recent article she has de- 
tibed how they come together in the morning. 
hey enter the room naturally and easily. One 
1ild may run up to inspect the fish and superin- 
nd their breakfast; another may lovingly linger 
rer his loom and ne small rug in process of 
eaving; a half dozen with no suggestion from 
e teacher begin to arrange chairs in a semi- 
tele: The children talk as they come together. 
‘ve minutes, ten minutes pass. The teacher ap- 
ars quite unperturbed. She could of course, by 
clap of her hands, call the class to order and 
ve these passing minutes. But save them for 
aat? For her own, or the children’s purposes ? 
“After all a child’s life is made of time. One 

_the realities the modern school has to accept 
that a child’s tempo is different from an adult’s. 
»0 much speeding up is a violation of the prin- 
le of growth, Therefore tempering the pace 


/ 
ti 
I 
! 


38 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


of a child’s day to his rate of movement is < 
necessity for which one must sacrifice the num. 
ber of activities he can undertake.” * 

But finally, in ten minutes or so—to returr 
to the first period of the day—the children ar: 
seated, and “Oral English” begins. Or rathe 
the youngsters begin to talk things over. 

Miss Irwin places great emphasis on the valu: 
to the child of learning to talk. She repudiate; 
utterly the traditional rule, “children should bi 
seen, not heard.” The taboo on children’s talk 
ing in the conventional class room has worked s¢ 
injuriously that “even when they are released t 
the playground, their communication with on 
another consists almost entirely of nudges, shout: 
and monosyllables.”” Miss Irwin’s children dis 
cuss neighborhood and family events, persona 
exploits or failures, what they saw at their las 
expedition to the Museum or to the docks. Thi 
group sits about informally, discussing natural; 
as any group will do. There is none of that pain 
ful silence which marks so many attempts at clas: 
room conversation when a child, at a signal fron 
the teacher, rises awkwardly, says something in j 
stereotyped fashion and then hastily sits down. 

Following the discussion period, there ma} 
be an hour of work in reading or arithmetic 






3 New Republic, Nov. 12, 1924. 


y 
| 


SOME SCHOOLS ARE DIFFERENT 39 


since the gifted children demand these subj jects— 


‘argely because of pressure on the part of their 


arents. After that comes a half hour of music, 


dancing, rhythm, simple instruments and_ then 
olay. The afternoon is devoted entirely to free 
\ctivities. Children may choose to read, to write, 
0 work with hammer, typewriter, weaving, paint- 
ng, blocks, to run errands on behalf of some 


lass activity, go on expeditions, and the like. 


Each class has its own “project” about which 
nost of its group activities center. Once a week 
‘me class entertains the rest by an assembly pe- 
iod devoted to their particular project. The 


hildren plan and execute the entire performance. 


“he projects selected for one term were Indians 
y the gifted group, a store by the normal, short 
lays by the dull, and a circus by the neurotic 
lass. The Indians dressed in costume, and con- 
cructed a large wigwam, a real tom-tom, and 
ther Indian paraphernalia fashioned after mod- 
Ss in the Museum. They made Indian books and 
atered i in them notes on Indian lore and custom. 

"Academic work has only recently been begun 
7 the dull class, but the emphasis is placed upon 
‘amatic exercises, upon music and work with 
terials, color, drawing, shellacking, etc. The 
‘inciple underlying Miss Irwin’s work with the 
ul group is that ordinary academic training for 





40 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


such children limits rather than helps them. It 
pushes them into classes “where they are des- 
tined always to be at the tail end . . . If we were 
to analyze 1,000 school children who are social 
and educational misfits, the great majority of 
them would certainly be founa to belong to this 
group. The truants, the hold-overs, the discipli- 
nary cases are preponderantly of the dull-normal 
type.” * Miss Irwin does not despair of children 
of this sort. Given an appropriate training, there 
is a great variety of useful and agreeable occupa- 
tions open to them. ‘To try instead to force them 
through a training for which they are not fitted 
is to inflict signal injury upon them. 

The neurotic class was conducted on the as- 
sumption that naughtiness and misbehavior are 
therapeutic rather than moral problems. These 
children were made the subject of special care 
and treatment by Dr. Parker and his associates, 
who gave advice as to both their school and extra- 
school activities. | 

The class for neurotic children was important 
not only because it attempted to salvage lives that 
would otherwise be thwarted and socially wasted, 
but also because of the light the work shed on 
the education of normal children. Much has been 


4“Fitting the School to the Child,” by Elisabeth Irwin and 
Louis Marks, The Macmillan Company. 1924. 


SOME SCHOOLS ARE DIFFERENT 4I 


learned about the intelligence of normal children 
from watching the training of those mentally de- 
fective. Similarly, much may be discovered about 
normal emotional development through work with 
children suffering from neuroses and fears. ‘We 
have learned from the neurotic child,” Miss Irwin 
says, “to what a startling degree the emotional 
status of an individual conditions his future func- 
tioning. Yet the school throughout its history has 
ignored the feeling life of the individual as some- 
thing outside its province. . . . Perhaps the great 
hope of the future of education lies in the fact that 
so far as we know the emotional life of the in- 
dividual may be infinitely educated.’ ® 

_ It is perhaps too early to draw definite con- 
lusions from Miss Irwin’s experiment. Even 
as regards achievement in the formal school sub- 
jects, the experiment should not be subjected to 
comparison with traditional classes, since few 
ichievement tests are valid under the fourth grade. 
Years of work must be done before we can know 
certainly what kind of training best fits each 
Yroup, or even how permanent the group limits 
re. We cannot doubt however that Miss Irwin 
.§ on the track of an educational reform of im- 
Nense importance. How free a hand she will be 
| 


5 See note, p. 40. 





42 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


given by the public authorities to develop the 
experiment still remains to be seen. How many 
other classes similar in organization will be per- 
mitted in other sections of the city is also an 
open question. The physical difficulties, the large 
classes, the lack of money are not the barriers 
that stand in the way. The real obstacles are 
in the minds of certain of the supervising staff. 
“They do not believe,” writes Miss Irwin, “that 
the physical and emotional demands of children 
are valid. And so the schools grind on, impart- 
ing information, instilling morals and preparing 
children for a future life.” ° 








It : 








Equally radical experiments with public school 
classes have been made for a number of years 
by Professor Ellsworth Collings, now of the 
University of Oklahoma. The first of Professor 
Collings’ experiments was conducted by him fot 
four years in a rural elementary school in Mont- 
gomery County, Missouri, and has been describe 
by him in his book, “An Experiment with a 
Project Curriculum” (The Macmillan Company). 
At present he is experimenting with junior hig! 
school classes in the practice school of the depart- 


“+6 New Republic, Nov. 12, 1924. 


SOME SCHOOLS ARE DIFFERENT 43 


tment of education of the University of Oklahoma. 
In both experiments, Professor Collings com- 
pletely abandoned the usual educational aims and 
methods. His concern is not to teach subjects 
tor to be guided by any course of study. His 
zim is to help boys and girls to pursue their own 
ictivities better and more fruitfully. The content 
of the school activities is made up of these in- 
‘erests, the curriculum being constantly made “on 
che spot” by pupil and teacher in conference. 
jponcretely, the children engage in innumerable 
‘nterprises, which fall naturally into four groups: 
ay, excursion, story and hand projects (in the 
more recent experiment a fifth group has been 
idded »—skill projects). These projects include 
rames, folk dancing, dramatizations, and social 
varties ; studies of community activities and prob- 
ems; stories in all their forms, oral, song, pic- 
‘ures and music; shop and construction work, 
‘aking furniture, growing vegetables, preparing 
‘chool luncheons. 
‘In Missouri, Professor Collings kept current 
‘heck of the proficiency gained in formal subjects 
1 the experimental school, as well as in two 
chools following the traditional course of study. 
“he tests at the end of four years showed the 
xperimental school far in the lead. Not only did 
1e children master the three R’s more thoroughly, 








44 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


but there were other gains as well. Enrollment 
and attendance rose to a point well nigh perfect; 
tardiness and punishment dropped to practically) 
zero, high school entrants increased, while in all 
these respects the traditional schools maintained 
their former low level. Moreover the experimen- 
tal school reacted favorably on the community. | 
More and better periodicals, more and better books 
found their way into the homes, farm and home, 
conveniences were installed, illness from prevent- | 
able diseases decreased. As Professor Kilpatrick 
points out in his introduction to the book, “It, 
can no longer be said that the theory won’t work. 
It has worked. A régime of child purposing is’ 
feasible. We can lay aside school subjects as 
such and succeed—and succeed admirably.” 
The present experiment of Professor Collings | 
is being carried on with sixty junior high school 
pupils, twenty in each of the three years. The! 
students are classified on the basis of their 1.Q.,| 
school achievement and physical development.) 
Five rooms are provided, each equipped not for a/ 
given subject, but for a special type of activity, | 
which follows most closely the interests of the 
boys and girls. i 
“The CuTTACHA writes Professor Collings i in : 
a letter to us, “is a project curriculum in every re-_ 
spect and is organized entirely around the natu-_ 








SOME SCHOOLS ARE DIFFERENT 45 


ral projects of boys and girls. The traditional 
‘school organization is completely ignored. _The 
‘function of the curriculum, we believe, is to fur- 
‘ther the continuous growing of junior high school 
‘boys and girls at their time, and in their measure. 
‘We have excursion projects, or purposeful study 
of community problems, because exploration of 
‘their own and other people’s environment is a 
normal phase of their expanding life. We have 
‘story projects, in their various forms, dramatiza- 
'tion, story telling, reading, because at this age, 
it is almost impossible to supply the demand for 
stories. Of course play projects are a vital part 
of their interests. The more vigorous and chal- 
lenging the play, the more it appeals to them. 
Football, base ball, basket ball, all forms of ath- 
letics, as well as dancing, singing, etc., are al- 
‘ways popular. And of course young people like 
‘to make things; hence our hand projects in wood, 
metal, leather, repair jobs, cooking, sewing and 
the like. Finally we have discovered that this age 
‘enjoys mastering a technique or skill, running 
‘a typewriter well, playing a musical instrument, 
‘learning how to debate. 

- “No attempt is made to teach any of the tra- 
ditional subjects as such. The pupils choose, plan, 
‘execute and judge their own activities under the 
‘guidance of the teachers. They budget their own 
* 





46 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


time. The daily schedule is of course extremely 
flexible.” 

The experiment has not progressed far enough 
to yield statistical results, but it is significant that 
Professor Collings is not proposing to apply the 
conventional standardized tests to measure the 
amount of information or skill acquired. Pro-| 
fessor Collings literally does not care whether 
or not a youngster can memorize a given alge- 
braic formula, or a row of historical facts.7 What 
he wants to know is how far has a school like 
the present one succeeded in changing the chil- 
dren’s conducts in their own “life acts.” How 
much better can they initiate, choose, understand 
their purposes, how much more intense and per- 
sistent is their drive, how much more skilled are 


7To what absurd lengths teachers will go in attempting’ 
to force their pupils to memorize totally useless material is 
well illustrated in the following suggestions made in all 
seriousness in a recent school publication in New York City: : 
MNEMONICS IN History : 

The present tendency in history teaching is to stress” 
thought and minimize memory training. But thought must | 
be based on facts, and memory is a storehouse of facts. It 
is a problem for the history teacher to get his pupils to. 
memorize even a minimum number of facts. It is sometimes 
amusing to a teacher to read the accounts of students who 
have garbled the facts they should have memorized. Mne- 
monic devices are frequently effective in memorizing ess 
sentials. 

For instance, in studying the military exploits of the 
Duke of Marlborough, a pupil will delight in the combina- 
tion BROM, formed of the initials of the battles of Blen- 
heim, Ramillet, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet. In studying 
the Intercolonial Wars it is helpful to remember that the 


SOME SCHOOLS ARE DIFFERENT 47 


ley in initiating, choosing and evaluating the 
1eans to a given end, how much more thorough 
_ their execution, how much better is their initia- 
on, choice, evaluation of improvement, etc. 
hese are the points noted in his scale, and these 
“€ measurements he is applying not only to the 
iildren in the experimental classes, but also to 
group in the city schools of Norman, Oklahoma, 


ho are pursuing the conventional high school 
ork, 


To our way of thinking, Professor Collings’ 
‘periment is a most significant contribution to 
lucation. A school which sets children free to 
irsue purposes that have meaning and value to 
m, in the pursuit of which they gain in power 
| initiate, to judge, to discriminate, to improve, 
‘dto press forward to ever expanding purposes, 


tials of (King) William’s, (Queen) Anne’s and (King) 
‘orge’s Wars form the word WAG, and that the French 
1 Indian War was the fourth of the series. In considering 
+ work of the Holy Alliance it is interesting to note that 
‘ssia, Austria, and Prussia were ready to RAP all revolu- 
‘aary uprising. 

Another pleasant way of remembering is the use of al- 
ration. For instance, in the settlement of the colony of 
orgia the student learns that four groups of people were 
| Saale the Preachers, the Patriots and the Profit- 
kers. 

“n trying to learn the order of presidential succession this 
Abination of the initials of the cabinet offices is helpful : 


+ WAPNIACL., ; ‘ 
“his article is meant to be only suggestive of mnemoniac 
‘sibilities in history. Each teacher can devise his own 


-ibinations to aid the students in memory work. 


‘ 
| 
. 
| 
' 
| 
) 
| 


48 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


is providing a basis for real growth, and the ac 
quisition of the real values of life. 

Below are a number of representative project 
worked out by the children: } 


1. Story Projects. The children themselve 
dramatized the following stories: 
. Silas Marner 
. Courtship of Miles Standish 
. An Indian Legend 
Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch 
Grandmother’s Wedding 
The Flower Fairies 
. Hoosier Schoolmaster 
. Pioneer Life of Grandfather 
. Tom Sawyer 
10. Penrod 
11. Chester Gump 
12. King Lear 
13. Miss Minerva and William Green 
14. Huckleberry Finn 
15. Penrod and Sam 
16. Seventeen (Tarkington) 
17. Money, Money (Tarkington), etc. 
2. Excursion Projects. Lectures, essays, an 
other accounts were given by the childre 
following these excursions and investigé 
tions : 
. How Iten Biscuits are made 
. How Norman gets its water 
_ How the Daily Oklahoman is published 
. How the Ford is assembled 
. How Norman is governed 


0 CON AnAWNH 


mBRWN 4 


SOME SCHOOLS ARE DIFFERENT 49 


. How James is tried in the Juvenile Court 

. How Norman spends its dollar 

. How Merit makes our bread 

. How Mr. Smith runs his bank 

. How Mr. James makes our flour 

. How the Wendell Company makes choco- 


late candy 


. How our homes are protected from fire 
. How our homes are lighted by the Okla- 


homa City Power Plant 


- How Mr. Leach runs his dairy 
. How the Sunshine Home cares for children 
. How the Oklahoma City Ice Plant makes 


our ice 


. How Mr. Thompson runs our historical 


museum. 


. How Mr. Lewis gins cotton 
. How the Wilson Packing Company pre- 


pares our meat, etc. 


‘Hand Pro jects: 


COON ANR WhrH 


. How we prepared our luncheon party 
. How Sam made his radio 


How John removed the water from our 
aquarium 

How Willie made his aeroplane 

How Mary made her cooking apron 


. How Lillie made her house rug 
. How Bill made his library table 


How Fannie made her jewel box 


. How Sarah made her leather hand bag 
. How Jane made her flower basket 

. How Thomas made his hall tree 

. How Lula made her Easter dress 


. Skill Products: 
. Cartooning Club 


. Poster Club 


. How James repaired his phonograph 

. How Mary made her Indian blanket 

. How Margaret made her table scarf 

. How Lillie made her boudoir cap 

. How Bob upholstered his rocking chair 
. How Fannie made her Indian moccasins 
. How Jennie made her card case 

. How George made his puttees 

. How Christine made her Indian basket 
. How Jane made her serving tray 

. How William made his nut bowl 

. How Susie made her Indian vase 

. How Celia made her Egyptian bowl 

. How Reta made her Valentine cards 
. How Lorena made her painting of Snow: 


OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


bound, etc. 


Sign Painting Club 


Illustrator Club 
Sketch Club 





. Reading Club 

. Debating Club 

. Public Speaking Club 
. Good English Club 

. Folk Dancing Club 

. Pep Club 

. Orchestra Club 

. Violin Club 

. Boys’ Glee Club | 
. Girls’ Glee Club { 
. Folk Song Club 





SOME SCHOOLS ARE DIFFERENT SI 


17. Operetta Club 

‘18. Costume Designing Club 

Ig. First Aid Club 

20. Camp Craft Club 

21. Watch Your Step Club 

22. Parliamentary Club 

23. Handwriting Club 
24. Spelling Club 

25. Typewriting Club 

26. Social Etiquette Club 

27. Piano Club 

: 28. Short Story Club 
29. Puzzle Club, etc. 
“Play Projects: 

. Tennis 

. Football 

. Basket ball 

Volley ball 

Track 

. Baseball 

. Boxing 

. Tumbling 

—g. Wrestling 

Io. Swimming 

11. Hiking 

12. Skating 

13. Indoor baseball 

‘14. Balloon ball 

15. Ball Push 

16. Dodgeball 

17. Easter Party 

18. Hallowe’en Party 

Ig. Valentine Party, etc. 


RORY SOW Ore 


V 
BEGINNING AT THE BEGINNING 


To laymen, to parents particularly, the ov 
standing contribution of modern psychological r 
search is the emphasis placed on the early yea 
of childhood. These years, it is now general 
agreed, are by far the most important of the e: 
tire life span, emotionally and mentally, as wi 
as physically. Some authorities go so far as 
claim that the main patterns of the future pe 
sonality are already fixed by the end of the secox 
year. ‘We believe,” says Dr. Watson, the b 
havior psychologist, “that by the end of the se 
ond year the pattern of the future is already la 
down. Many things which go into the making « 
this pattern are under the control of the parent 
but they have not been made aware of them. T! 
question as to whether the child will possess 
stable or unstable personality, whether it is gi 
ing to be timid and subject to rages and tantrum 
whether it will exhibit tendencies of general ovi 

or under emotionalism, and the like, has alreac 
52 





BEGINNING AT THE BEGINNING 53 


en answered by the end of the two year pe- 
‘hee * 

Psychoanalysis reveals many instances where 
vere emotional shocks experienced during the 
st years have produced serious maladjustments 
later life. Dr. Watson in describing the meth- 
{used by him in instilling the fear of a white 
t in an eight-months-old baby, added that he 
lieved it highly probable that the child’s fear 
' the animal would always persist, unless it 
uld be overcome by some stronger counter emo- 
on. Similar fears and emotional states are daily 
eated in babies at the hands of well—or ill— 
tentioned parents or nursemaids. 

These laboratory conclusions are now beginning 
be reflected in the field of social endeavor. The 
by is no longer regarded merely as the “young 
imal” portrayed in the mother’s manual whose 
velopment is completely served by proper diet, 
oper sleep and proper airing periods. Problems 
' milk, teeth, rickets, adenoids, weight, con- 
gious diseases are important, but so are ques- 
ys of mental hygiene, emotional and social 
bits and personality traits. The habit clinic 
t the correction of behavior. disorders is sup- 


1 “Studies in Infant Psychology,” by Dr. John B. Watson 
id Rosalie Rayner Watson, Scientific Monthly, December, 
21, p. 404. 











54 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


plementing the infants’ milk depot, and in Massa- 
chusetts is a regular part of the State Health De 
partment. Not only research bureaus of leadin 
universities like Columbia, Yale and Harvard, bui 
also leading organizations, such as the Americat 
Child Health Association, the American Associa 
tion of University Women, and the Americat 
Federation of Women’s Clubs are making 
pre-school age a subject of special study and in 
vestigation, and nursery schools, both under thei 
auspices and that of progressive educational int 
stitutions are multiplying rapidly.’ 

At the same time doctors and scientific met 
generally are reminding us that little is known 0 
the capacities, needs and norms of children beloy 
school age. Even their physical requirement 
have been overlooked. As Dr. Arnold Gesell 0 
Yale tells us, the period below school age exceed 
all others in mortality and morbidity. Of all th 
deaths in the country, over one-third are thos 
of children below six years. Most of the physi 





2 Miss Harriet Johnson, director of the Nursery School : 
the New York Bureau of Educational Experiments, and of 
of the pioneers in the movement, has recently obtained # 
formation from some thirty-six nursery schools all over 
country. Data were secured by means of a questionnait 
and related to such matter as fundamental objective 
whether child welfare or research, affiliations with chil 
welfare or educational organizations, kind of occupatior 
and equipment, the training of teachers, and nature of 

“ search, if carried on. 





BEGINNING AT THE BEGINNING 55 


il, as well as mental defects of school children 
tiginate in the pre-school years. A table pub- 
shed by the New York City Bureau of Child 
Tygiene, based on a study of 1,061 children be- 
veen four and six, and on 243,416 examinations 
f£ school children, revealed that the younger chil- 
ten uniformly had a larger percentage of physi- 
il defects than the older ones. These defects 
tcluded hypertrophied tonsils, defective nasal 
teathing, malnutrition, defective teeth, pulmo- 
ary and cardiac troubles, nervous disorders, or- 
lopedic defects. Dr. Gesell quotes figures to 
iow that a large proportion of all cases of blind- 
8ss occur in these first years, three-fourths of 
te deafness, one-third of the crippled and fully 
ghty percent of the speech defects. Practically 
very case of mental deficiency and an important 
soup of mental disorders, the psycho-neuroses, 
+ well as border-line conditions, may all go back 
+ very early childhood. Society might be saved 
any incompetents by paying proper attention to 
e earliest abnormalities of childhood.® 

In order that abnormalities may be easily recog- 
zed, it is necessary that we should more gen- 
ally know how children normally develop. If 
e early years are of such fundamental im- 


The Pre-School Child: from the Standpoint of Public 
ygiene and Education,” Houghton, Mifflin Company, 1923. 


56 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


portanice, it is vital for us to have precise knowl- 
edge of how children grow, and what influences 
and conditions make for the best development. 
Recently three studies have been published which 
throw light on this relatively unexplored field. 
One investigation was made by Dr. Gesell, who 
for six years surveyed systematically the ordinary 
and normal behavior of children from birth 
through five years of age.* Another study was 
made by Drs. Baldwin and Stecher of the Child 
Welfare Research Station of the University of 
Iowa, who observed and tested 105 children over 
a period of from one to three years in the labora- 
tory nursery school of the university. The third 
report was made by Dr. Buford Johnson, for- 
merly psychologist of the New York Bureau of 
Educational Experiments, who based the major 
part of five years’ study on the children in the 
Nursery School of the Bureau and the City and 
Country School affiliated with it.° The findings 
of all these reports are offered tentatively and 
should be so accepted, especially by lay workers. 
Dr. Gesell’s observations which represent a be- 
havior study of first importance are presented not 


4“The Mental Life of the Pre-School Child,” by Arnold 
Gesell, The Macmillan Company, 1924. 

5 “The Psychology of the Pre-School Child,” by sh T, 
Baldwin, and Lorle I. Stecher, D. Appleton & Co, 

6“Mental Growth of Children, ” by Buford J. ’ Johnson, 
E. P. Dutton & Co., 1925. 


BEGINNING AT THE BEGINNING 57 


‘only with scientific precision, but with much hu- 
‘man insight as well. Such homely—and thrilling 
-—facts as when the baby first splashes in his bath, 
‘when he first holds his head erect, when he rolls 
‘over from back to stomach, when he first tries to 
‘stand, to creep, to walk, to bang with a spoon, 
all these overt evidences of development have been 
placed in their appropriate points in an ascending 
‘scale. “A man,” says Dr. Gesell, “may be as old 
‘as his arteries, but an infant is as old as his be- 
havior. In the very nature of things an infant 
‘can do neither more nor less than the maturation 
and organization of his behavior patterns permit. 
‘An interpretation of developmental status in re- 
lation to chronological age and personal-social en- 
vironment is the diagnostic basis for safeguarding 
the mental welfare of the pre-school child.’’ 

Fifty normal children were tested and observed 
just after birth and at 4, 6, 9, 12, 18, 24, 36, 48, 
and 60 months of age. The results were codified 
into a set of schedules containing in all as many 
as 150 items. These items were grouped under 
‘four main headings: motor, language, personal- 
‘social (social experience and personality traits), 
adaptive behavior (general capacity to exploit the 
environment or to adjust to imposed standards). 
Dr. Gesell had the wisdom not to make his items 
‘into a fixed and inflexible psychometric scale. His 





58 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


purpose was to devise an adjustable clinical in- 
strument, and he has already tested it out practi- 
cally in the Yale Psycho-Clinic with good results, 
He is careful however to warn his readers that 
this instrument will not operate automatically, ob- 
jective measurements must always be supple- 
mented by clinical judgment. “The problems of 
pre-school development are still so undefined and 
so complicated with possible medical factors that 
considerable clinical caution must be used in ap- 
plying norms and standards.” “A difference of 
two weeks or a month may make a great deal of 
difference in the score in the first year or two, 
particularly in the field of language. Delay in 
walking may be due to rickets, not to subnormal 
intelligence. Some children perhaps develop more 
by spurts than others. There are always indi- 
vidual differences.” 

Not the least interesting part of the study was 
the comparative observations of eight pairs of 
children, a four months versus a six months old 
baby, a six months versus nine months, and so on 
up to four years versus five years. Pedagogues 
and parents may well heed the comment at the 
end of these observations: ‘“The last examination 
pair were highly amenable when compared with 
their early predecessors. They would do our 
bidding; they would sit when we told them to 


BEGINNING AT THE BEGINNING 59 


‘sit; they would await their turn; they would sur- 
render even a coveted toy; they would remain 
‘quiet for a time exposure while being photo- 
graphed ;—what would they not do for us? We 
were left with a profound realization of their 
teachability. This realization was disquieting; it 
led us to think that we run a hygienic risk when 
the schools are permitted to overexploit this very 
teachability . 

__ The aim of Drs. Baldwin and Stecher was also 
to furnish tentative standards for measuring the 
physical and mental development of pre-school 
children. The children examined ranged in age 
from two to six years, and were divided into three 
‘groups in attendance at the laboratory school. Dr. 
‘Baldwin’s physical measurements are nationally 
known, and this last report contains new and use- 
ful material on physical growth, the first collec- 
‘tion available of consecutive physical measure- 
‘ments on any considerable number of pre-school 
children. 

_ Far less successful, so it seems to us, are the 
‘Tesults of the psychological and mental tests. 
‘Drs. Baldwin and Stecher are apparently inspired 
by the pedagogy of an older school. They are op- 
posed to letting the child “just grow” and be- 
lieve in a definite program to awaken wholesome 
interests and attitudes, and to insure normal 


60 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


growth. This definite program, needless to say,| 
involves a good deal of old fashioned “training.” 
“Music is played for appreciation and the habit} 
is early established of listening quietly and not| 
indulging in activities of one’s own while music 
is going on.” “It is interesting to see that chil-| 
dren of the earlier ages have no conception of| 
what it means to keep in line behind one another.” 
“It is not possible to give the younger children | 
much idea of design either by form or color” (a' 
conclusion quite at variance with that of other) 
close observers of children). When presented 
with modeling clay, the children were completely | 
bewildered and “as with other material for con- | 
structive imagination, waited for the teachers to 
make something for them.” | 

Such an attitude must necessarily affect the re- | 
sults of any inquiry as to how children normally 
develop. Children in a non free environment’ 
easily succumb into passivity, or react to tests in a| 
negative or half hearted fashion, or else attempt’ 
to respond in the manner they think is expected of | 
them. Moreover the Iowa laboratory was frankly | 
an experiment station, the younger groups of | 
children stayed in it only one and a half hours | 
daily,—long enough to be tested, but scarcely long | 
enough to adjust naturally and freely. | 
_ Dr. Buford Johnson in her book does two things 





BEGINNING AT THE BEGINNING 61 


extremely well. She provides important data 
bearing on the vital relationship between physical 
growth and mental development and she makes 
sound and careful appraisal of the value of such 
tests as are available for measuring early mental 
capacity. Two tests, widely used throughout the 
country, the Binet-Simon tests (Stanford Re- 
vision) and the Pintner and Patterson scale of 
performance tests, she discovered to be inadequate 
for the extremes, the scores of young children 
especially being influenced by environmental 
training. She also concluded that children grow 
at different rates, and that hereditary tendencies 
affect the rate of growth and therefore the stage 
of development at a given chronological age. 

Less clinical, but none the less intensive obser- 
vations of young children are also being made in 
4 growing number of nursery schools, notably in 
the Nursery School maintained by the New York 
Bureau of Educational Experiments, in the Mer- 
rill Palmer School in Detroit, in the nursery 
schools directed by Miss Patty Hill of Teachers 
College of Columbia University, and also in the 
tecently established Institute of Child Welfare 
Research of Teachers College, in the Ruggles 
Street Day Nursery in Boston, and in the Walden 
School in New York City. So rapidly is the 
Movement growing that already pressure is being 


62 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


brought to bear on the public school authorities 
in various cities to extend their supervision to 
children of nursery school age. 

In England public control of nursery schools 
has long been an accomplished fact. The famous 
Fisher act of 1918 conferred on local education 
bodies power to establish schools for children over 
two and under five years of age. The movement 
has grown slowly, for despite the remarkable re- 
sults obtained by the schools established, public 
appropriations for all kinds of educational pur- 
poses in England have been drastically reduced, 
But through the devoted efforts of Margaret Mc- 
Millan and others, the schools in existence are 
extending their influence and are an indispensable 
part of the public educational system. Ina Board 
of Education memorandum, the functions of the 
nursery schools are stated to be, “first to provide 
the close personal care and medical supervision of 
the individual child, involving provision for its 
comfort, rest and suitable nourishment; and sec- 
ond, definite training, bodily, mental and social 
under the guidance and oversight of a skilled and 
intelligent leader, and the orderly association of 
children of various ages in common games and 
occupations. It (the school) is much more than’ 
a place for minding children . . . the influences 
which an adequate supply of efficiently managed| 


BEGINNING AT THE BEGINNING 63 


nursery schools could exercise upon both parents 
and children can hardly be over-estimated.” 

It is interesting also that a distinction is made 
in England between nursery schools and day 
nurseries. The latter are controlled by the Min- 
istry of Health, which has specifically stated that 
wherever possible children over three should at- 
tend nursery schools instead of day nurseries. 

The whole nursery school movement in Eng- 
land has been largely motivated by social con- 
siderations. It has been part of a general cam- 
paign against ignorance, poverty and neglect. To 
quote Margaret McMillan, “In our teeming 
streets, and crowded warrens there live and move 
nearly two millions of little children who have 
ao nursery but the streets, no playground but a 
dark court or a narrow and crowded room where 
1 whole family lives and moves like birds in a 
sage. They suffer. They sink into ill health, into 
nental slackness or stupor. They fail as pro- 
lucers of wealth, as fathers and mothers, as citi- 
rens. And the state pays for them great sums 
‘0 keep many of them in a wretched world.” 
| In America, the nursery school has been largely 
ised as a means of scientifically studying young 
hildren, and discovering what conditions best fos- 


“1 “The Nursery School in the Old Country,” by Margaret 
AcMillan, Progressive Education, Jan., 1925. 


64 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


ter their development. Until recently, the children 
attending our nursery schools have been drawn 
mainly from homes of well to do and professional 
people, who have been interested in the scientific 
observation of children, and who have also re- 
alized that the nursery school was better organized 
to meet the needs of young children than the 
average home. For with the best of intentions, 
what can the average parent do to provide the 
necessary space, equipment and play material so 
vital to the earliest years? Even in the suburbs 
and small towns, practically no consideration is 
given in the construction of houses to the question 
of the needs of young children. Professor M. V. 
O’Shea of Wisconsin recently had a survey made 
of the houses of a mid-western city to find out 
whether in their building any thought had been 
given to the possibility of young children living 
in them; he discovered of course that the possi- 
bility had not affected the house plans in any way. 
The general attitude of the house owners was 
one of surprise that babies or runabouts need 
any special arrangements. | 

Yet when one considers what the natural ac 
tivities are of these early years, the inadequacy of 
the average home appears at once. How much 
running, sliding, jumping, climbing, throwing, 
pulling, swinging can a child of two or three do 


BEGINNING AT THE BEGINNING 65 


in the ordinary city flat, or tidy little house in a 
restricted residential block? What ambitious 
floor schemes for building houses, or laying tracks, 
Or constructing cities, can he carry out in a living 
room filled with adult furniture, how much un- 
hindered experimenting is he permitted with ham- 
mer, nails and saw, with paints, crayons, clay, 
beads and weaving materials which in the course 
of use are likely to become “messy” in unskilled 
hands? How much “bossing” must he submit to 
on the part of older brothers and sisters? How 
much over-solicitous or nagging attention does he 
teceive from his mother and other grown-ups 
about him? How much sheer vacuity falls to his 
lot—if he be city bred—aimless walking up and 
down a stony pavement, hand led by an indifferent 
furse who airs him by the clock? 

_ The nursery school at least attempts to provide 
a set-up suitable to the child’s own level. It or- 
linarily offers ample space, both indoors and out, 
arge play apparatus—slides, see-saw, ladders, big 
yacking boxes, swings, sandboxes, to afford him 
‘ree use of the larger muscles and chance for 
whysical adventure—and also plenty of materials 
that can be put to creative use, blocks, wagons, 
yeads, clay, paints and toys of all kinds. A health- 
‘ul regimen of play and rest is observed, and in 
hose schools which provide all-day care, question 


66 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


of food and naps receive due attention. Many a 
child learns to eat spinach for the first time in 
the nursery school or to go to sleep promptly and 
independently at nap time. 

There are also certain more subtle advantages 
in the nursery school over the average home which 
are provided in greater or less degree. The child 
without being weaned entirely from his mother 
at least is freed from her sometimes too close 
supervision for several hours each day. He be- 
comes more self directing, less dependent on her 
approval or disapproval, more interested in doing 
things for their own sake, and not to get a re- 
sponse from her. The mother on the other hand, 
is apt to become more objective in her attitude 
towards her child when she observes him in a 
group of a dozen others of the same age, and 
notes how an expert, skilled in handling children 
meets situations as they arise. She may learn 
for the first time that coercion, sharp commands, 
expectation of instantaneous obedience, or undue 
emotional displays on her part are more serious in 
their effect on her child than feeding him the 
wrong kind of food, or permitting him to catch’ 
cold. Many an unfortunate personality trait in’ 
a youngster, such as excessive timidity, or pug-! 
nacity, or aggressiveness or unwillingness to co- 
operate, has been traced to faulty home condi-' 


BEGINNING AT THE BEGINNING 67 


ions and with patience and wise guidance has 
een made to disappear. 

Moreover the nursery school provides the most 
latural way for young children to associate with 
thers of their own age on equal terms. While 
hese social contacts must often be made grad- 
tally and the child, in the beginning at least, pro- 
ected from too violent or too stimulating asso- 
iation with his fellows, there is no question but 
that he gains immensely from such contacts. The 
Ssumption that children of this age are essentially 
ndividualistic is only partly true. Young chil- 
lren are far more social than adults have hith- 
rto appreciated and profit greatly from group 
ctivities, and free association with one another. 
f not regimented or forced into conventional 
aodes of behavior by the teacher, children can 
iften work themselves out of undesirable social 
elationships into desirable ones. 

To be sure a word of warning is not amiss in 
‘ew of the over emphasis on socialization which 
me meets everywhere in current educational dis- 
ussion. Because modern social life has become 
o complex and the interdependence of human be- 
ags so diverse, we have come to believe that we 
hall somehow solve the problem by plunging chil- 
ren into social situations at the age of eighteen 
aonths. There may be value in a highly de- 


68 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


veloped social being, in a person who knows how 
to get on with other people, but there is also su- 
preme value in the highly developed individual 
who knows how to get on with himself. The little 
child needs plenty of margin, plenty of leeway for 
the development of his personality. The jostling 
and hub-bub of other personalities about him have! 
their uses, but they are not as important as is 

claimed by some of the zealots in the movement. 
The socialization enthusiast is not the only one, 
of course. There is also the habit maker, the ped- 
agogue or supervisor who has got up in advance 
an inventory of desirable habits, which it is be- 
lieved that children should form, and sails into 
the nursery school room with score and note book 
to see whether or not they are being acquired. 
Many of these habits are really desirable, and chil- 
dren—if not coerced—will easily fall into them. 
Many others are entirely harmless, but others are 
both unchildlike and even of doubtful value. 
Why, for example, should a child of three or four 
be expected to “hold gate or door open for 
others,” to shake hands “voluntarily with any- 
one,” to “tell the truth” (what, may the three’ 
year old child ask, what is truth?), “wait hi 
turn willingly,” “stop crying when told to,” and 
so on through a long list of “social-moral” habits) 
contained in a recently concocted inventory by a) 
. 


i 


BEGINNING AT THE BEGINNING 69 


graduate student of Teachers College, of Colum- 
bia University.® 

_ Another danger threatening the growing num- 
‘ber of nursery schools is that they will be staffed 
and supervised by pedagogues of the old school, 
who will merely extend to children below four 
years, the repressive and dreary formalism that 
characterizes too many kindergartens and primary 
grades. “Educational” activities, stressed for 
wheir own sake, or to prove some fine spun theory 
are likely to prevail, or else the trivial and seden- 
vary occupations of the day nursery type. 

_ Fortunately, modern psychological research is 
/hrowing increasing light on the kind of environ- 
ment and activities necessary for sound growth. 
Jata is accumulating to show that children in a 
pirited, free and enriched environment test above 
he average both mentally and physically. Such 
»vidence must infallibly have its effect on nur- 
‘ery school development, through the nursery 
chool on the kindergarten, and through the kin- 
/ergarten, on the grades above, socializers, habit 
lakers, and standardizers, notwithstanding. 





8“A Tentative Inventory of the Habits of Children from 
-wo to Four Years of Age,” by Ruth Andrus, Ph.D. Pub- 
shed by Teachers College, Columbia University, New York 
‘ity, 1924. . 








VI 
THE USES OF MENTAL TESTING 


Mucu water has run under the mill since a 
state superintendent of public instruction mounted 
the rostrum at a meeting of the National Educa- 
tion Association and thundered his denunciation 
of the proposed application of certain measuring 
scales to classroom work. “As well,” he stormed, 
“as well attempt to measure the divine afflatus 
of a mother’s love as to seek to apply scales and 
measuring rods to the subtle relationship between 
teacher and taught!’ 

Since then so prodigious has been the industry 
of scale makers and psychologists, that if the 
“divine afflatus’ has escaped measurement, it 
would seem as though it were through sheer ac- 
cident.* Scales are in the making or have been 
devised to measure all kinds of capacities and 
even such elusive qualities as will power, in- 
genuity, imagination, ambition and ability to ap 


“ 


preciate poetry. One student was seriously coun+ 





1 It requires some 230 pages of fine print merely to list th 
tests and articles about tests in bulletin, 1923, No. 55 of the 
U. S. Bureau of Education. | 


7O 


a 


THE USES OF MENTAL TESTING 71 


seled by the psychological department of a large 
aniversity to essay working out a scale to meas- 
ire human success. It is doubtful if any other 
single subject has ever so engrossed the interest 
ind attention of schoolmen and psychologists as 
he reputed measurement of intelligence and the 
development of objective scales for gauging class- 
oom work. And small wonder, for if the claims 
o£ the most ardent psychologists of this school 
are to be taken seriously, the tests provide a com- 
Daratively simple instrument by which, within an 
jour or two any child’s mental endowment can 
de ascertained, which will determine his sphere 
for life.? For according to these authorities, gen- 
ral intelligence is fixed and unchangeable, native 
and inherited, and as permanent a part of a child 
as blueness of eye, or roundness or squareness of 
aeadshape. Henceforth it will be a simple matter 
‘o shuffle children off with a high degree of pre- 
‘tision into various grades, each to be ticketed and 
i 

2 Discussing backward pupils found in the upper grades, 
‘Ruth Swan Clark of the Vocational Guidance for Juniors, 
‘New York City, says: “As the intelligence ratings of these 
pupils could have been secured in the primary grades, and 
their subsequent slow progress anticipated, it is to be re- 
-zretted that they could not have occupied the extra two and 
three years of elementary school work with training that 
-would have fitted them for going to work at the earliest age 
when working papers are obtainable.” (Some Results in 
Psychological Tests in “Contributions to Education,” pub- 


lished by N. Y. Society for the Experimental Study of 
Education, 1924.) 








72 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


3? 66 99 «66 


labeled, “very superior,” “superior,” “average,” 
“dull” and “very dull.” On the basis of these 
groupings, decision shall be made as to each child’s 
probable future, whether he shall go to high school 
and college, or into the manual trades, whether he 
shall study for a profession or become a mechanic 
or manual laborer. Certain well known private 
schools arbitrarily rule out children who do not 
come up to a certain high intelligence rating, and 
a recent high school department head in New 
York City in a published article deplored the ad- 
mission into high school of any student having 
less than a go I.Q.° 

Critics of such wholesale assertions declare in 
the first place that no one has succeeded in de- 
fining general intelligence, and that it is therefore 
absurd to pretend that the tests measure intelli- 
gence or that intelligence is something fixed by 
inheritance. The attempt to group children ar-| 
bitrarily is certain to work great social injustice | 
and grave injury to those labeled as predestined’ 
inferiors or superiors. Moreover while the tests/ 
undoubtedly measure a certain kind of ability,’ 
they are largely tests of information and training, | 


3A more intelligent and sympathetic point of view is well. 
expressed in a paper by Mabel Skinner of the Washington | 
Irving High School, New York City, “Our Low I. Q.’s” in 
“Contributions to Education.” i 
4 See also articles by Walter Lippmann in the New Re- 
public, Oct. 25, Nov. 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, 1922. 


i ee 


THE USES OF MENTAL TESTING 73 


Many appeal to the type of mind that is apt at 
solving puzzles; in most of the tests, undue em- 
phasis is given to ability to define abstract terms. 
Prepared as the tests are by pedagogues, they are 
based on the false assumption that success in 
school work is another measure of intelligence. 
The “‘intelligent’’ pupil is the one who is proficient 
in his lessons, who can easily master the ideas 
found in books. The one who has difficulty in 
understanding abstract symbols is rated “dull.” 
Even teachers and psychologists who admit that 
there are important capacities that lie outside the 
range of the measurability of the scales, tend to 
patronize those who possess them. Unusual in- 
tuitive capacity, rich emotional appreciations, sen- 
sitive or artistic perceptions, are not gifts of the 
intellect as generally defined, and find little room 
for expression in the ordinary classroom, nor 
would they be likely to be brought to light by 
‘means of the ordinary psychological test. That 
little negro boy who fumbles miserably when re- 
quired to reverse mentally the hands of the clock 
and then tell the time, has an uncanny sense of 
the teacher’s personality; that girl who simply 
‘cannot pass the arithmetic reasoning tests, can 
do marvels with brush and color; that inarticulate 
youngster who cannot say sixty words in the re- 
‘quired three minutes, is a new being when the 


74. OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


hour for music and rhythm comes.” Yet con- 
ceivably these children and many like them, will 
as a result of “scientific” testing be graded, “dull” 
or “dull normal’ and be henceforth so considered 
throughout life. 


Yet when administered with “skepticism and 


sympathy” (the phrase is Mr. Lippmann’s), the 


tests do have a positive value. They cannot tell . 


us all there is to know about a child, nor should 
their findings be taken as final or irrevocable.® 
They undoubtedly measure a certain kind of men- 
tal ability—the sort that is required to deal with 
the problems of classroom work—and they may, 
therefore, be a useful aid in grading children in 


school. The present method of lumping all chil- 


dren of the same age together regardless of their 


5 “Special gifts for music and for drawing are by no 
means confined to children testing high in general intelli- 


gence, but may appear in combination with I. Q. of nearly | 


any degree.” Leta S. Hollingworth, “Experiments in the 
Education of Gifted Children” in “Contributions to Edu- 
cation,” 1924. 


6 Relative to changing I. Q. the conclusions of Dr. Buford | 
Johnson in her recent study of mental growth in children are | 
worth citing here. The I. Q.s determined by the Stanford 
Revision of the Binet-Simon scale tend to increase for ages | 
three to six, and to decrease from seven upward, when tests | 
are made at intervals of a year. There is a greater incon- 
stancy of I. Q.’s in the early years, due to marked influence | 


of training. Six cases of 125 changed 20 points or more; 
23 changed 10 points or more. It is not probable that a 
high I. Q. obtained at an early age will remain constant. 
(“Mental Growth of Children,” p. 79, published by E. P. 
Dutton and Company, 1925.) 


ee 


THE USES OF MENTAL TESTING 75 


varying capacities has proved entirely unwork- 
able. The tests at least give official sanction to 
a fact never before publicly admitted by those in 
charge of our school systems, that children differ 
profoundly in mental make-up. Every classroom 
teacher has always been aware of this fact of in- 
dividual differences. She has always realized 
that what she is trying to get across is over the 
heads of perhaps one-fourth of her class and far 
below the capacity of another fourth. But the 
course of study is constructed on the assumption 
that all children of a given age have approximately 
the same ability and that any child—unless actu- 
ally mentally defective or seriously handicapped 
physically—can by diligent application measure up 
to the requirements of the grade appropriate to 
his age. 

To be sure the educational machine erected on 
this assumption has long been on the point of 
collapse. It is now well over fifteen years since 
the problem of repeaters and laggards has been 
occupying the attention of schoolmen. Innumer- 
able age-grade tabulations brought to light the 
significant fact that from one-third to one-fourth 
of all children in the public schools annually fail 
to do the work assigned to them, and must, there- 
fore, according to the machine requirements, go 
through the identical process again. Busy statis- 


76 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 
ticians began to figure up staggering totals show- 
ing the loss to the State of this annual “repeat- 
ers” bill; others more socially minded drew at- 
tention to the iniquitous effect on the children 
themselves in thus being left back and gradually 
becoming schooled in failure. 

How clumsily the professional educator pro- 
poses to deal with the problem, however, may be 
seen from a report recently issued by the New 
York Department of Education on Grading and 
the Course of Study which summarizes what New 
York and twenty-three other cities are doing to 
lessen retardation and to modify the curriculum. 
Here is a complete picture of the administrator- 
pedagogue faced with a serious breakdown in his 
educational machine. For that is what retarda- 
tion means—millions of children annually clog- 
ging the wheels of what should be a smoothly 
running process. They cannot or will not follow 
the prescribed course of study and when pro- 
motion time comes around and large masses 
should automatically move forward, these recalci- 
trants balk to the utter confusion of the operators 
of the machine. What is the remedy? Abolish 
the time-table, scrap the machinery, and start 
afresh with the children as developing, growing, 
infinitely diverse human beings? Heaven forbid! 





THE USES OF MENTAL TESTING rire 


“Our chief task,’”’ says the report, “is to speed 
up the 46 percent of slow progress pupils.” 

The “multiple track’? method employed by Oak- 
land, California, is dwelt upon at length. This 
provides for five general types of classes—acceler- 
ated, normal, opportunity, limited, atypical. The 
plan calls for a differentiated course of study, 
“enrichment” on one hand, and “minimum es- 
sentials’ on the other. ‘The main consideration 
is to have the progress of all pupils continuous.” 
_ The curriculum and the time-table are thus the 
Procrustean bed in which the child, by devices 
nowadays scientifically determined must somehow 
be fitted. Never a hint anywhere in the report 
that fulfilling the requirements of a prescribed 
course of study may bear little or no relation to 
the learning process, that it may in fact make real 
learning forever impossible by destroying the 
child’s initiative, natural curiosity and originality. 
Never a hint that attention to the real needs of 
children, to the exigencies of their growth, is the 
only means of insuring that what is learned has 
any value or gets any real hold on the child’s 
imagination and interest. Instead, advises the 
educational “repair man,” clip off the minutes 
from the time ordinarily devoted to one subject 
and apply them to another, “dilute” here, “en- 


78 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


rich” there, slow up this lot, speed up this one, 
re-grade, re-group, measure, then compute your 
percentage of gains. If they are not high enough 
try again—on the same old lines. 

The intelligence tests offer at least to bring a 
modicum of order out of this chaos of school, 
grading and curriculum making. Grouping chil- 
dren more homogeneously as to mental capacity) 
so that the quick and the slow need no longet! 
interfere with one another, will set the teacher 
free to deal more specifically with the special re-— 
quirements of her class. This should eventually’ 
lead to real differentiation in educational programs” 
so as to conserve and develop the varying possi-. 
bilities of various groups. Once rid the school-/ 
master of the notion that children who are un- 
fitted for a narrow bookish curriculum are theres | 
by inferior to those who find book learning oe 
and we may succeed in modifying the school cur 
riculum into a truly educative instrument. That 
this is. possible even in a large city school, where, 
the registration ran over three thousand, is dem- 
onstrated in the unique experiment carried on for 
four years by Elisabeth Irwin and Louis Marks, 
principal, in P. S. 64, Manhattan, and described 
by them in their book, “Fitting the School to the 
Child” (The Macmillan Co.). Here we find the, 
tests being employed for real diagnostic purposes 





THE USES OF MENTAL TESTING 79 


1 order to deal intelligently with mentally de- 
ective, dull-normal, neurotic, gifted and even 
few normal children. Special classes organized 
or these groups, instead of becoming mere dump- 
ag grounds for various problem cases, became 
enuine testing grounds for vital educational the- 
ries. Needless to say in all of them, the rigid re- 
uirements of the curriculum were relaxed and the 
aildren were permitted a degree of freedom and 
pportunity for creative expression quite unheard 
f in a public school building. It should also be 
oted that in addition to the tests for intelligence, 
ie children were given a complete physical exam- 
iation, glasses were prescribed when needed, diet 
orrected, so far as possible and home conditions 
yoked into by a visiting teacher and a health 
rorker. | 

For the most part, however, the administration 
f intelligence tests is in the hands of professional 
Tucators of the old school and they are proceed- 
ig to make them merely another accessory to the 
lucational machine. In New York and other 
ties, the order has gone out that all children are 
enceforth to be grouped in each grade according 
) mental capacity, and a number of schools are 
ipposedly attempting to modify the curriculum 
) meet the varying needs of these groups. The 
‘sting and grading of the children according to 


80 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


mental ability progress merrily enough, but the 
modified course of study as yet holds out little 
hope of genuine educational reform. 

A visitor to most of these “experimental” 
schools would never guess that anything new or 
different were being tried. In each classroom are 
the same rigid rows held in absolute silence, the 
same routine, the same doling out of irrelevant 
and uninviting abstractions. It is, we will say, 
a Friday, and the weekly reviews are being given. 
“Take out your prefix words,” drones the teacher. 
The class, fifty apathetic little robots, operating as 
a unit, slip one book off the desks and another on 
them. ‘Prefix words!” What in the name of 
common sense have they to do either with chil- 
dren or with education? 

Even in the few schools where “modification’’ 
of the course of study is somewhat more ad- 
vanced, the changes consist mainly in a superficial 
“dilution” or “enrichment,” simplifying or broad- 
ening the conventional requirements. True, in 
the classes for mental defectives, and in the scat- 
tered groups of very gifted children, traditional 
methods have given way to more progressive ones 
but it is significant, that for “normal” children 
who are still in the majority, no changes of any 
sort are contemplated. For them, according tc 
their betters, “the present course of study appears 





THE USES OF MENTAL TESTING SI 


» function most satisfactorily,” the reason be- 
ig no doubt that they survive it without open 
*bellion. And the failure to rebel is the reason 
f£ course why the worst abuses which afflict the 
luman race, continue to exist. 


) 
/ 





VII 
DISCOVERING THE INDIVIDUAL 





I | 


Earzy in the nineties, before there were any 
educational scales to prove it, a schoolmaster from 
the west dared to utter a most grievous heresy. 
“Children,” declared P. W. Search, then super- 
intendent of schools in Pueblo, Colorado, “chil- 
dren differ.” They differ, he said, so profoundly 
and so completely that the class system so elabo- 
rately nurtured by pedagogues and administra- 
tors must be abandoned. So also must all exist- 
ing types of text books, likewise most of the edu- 
cational ideas held to be truest and dearest by 
the great majority of teachers. Each child in the 
Pueblo schools was thenceforth given a chance to 
proceed at his own rate, regardless of the prog 
ress of others. 

This was the beginning of the movement for 
individual instruction, a movement which since 
it was opposed both to tradition and administra- 
tive convenience, has grown extremely slowly. 
Frederick Burk of the San Francisco State Nor+ 
mal School improved upon the Pueblo Rae by a 

82 









DISCOVERING THE INDIVIDUAL 83 


ivision of subject matter into units. He also, 
ith the help of his teachers, devised a series of 
amphlets suitable to individual instruction. Two 

f his former pupils, Sutherland and Washburne, 
re at present applying his methods with further 
lodifications in the schools of Los Angeles and 
Vinnetka, Ill. Similar experiments are also un- 
ef way to a limited degree in a number of small 
laces; in Oceano, Calif., in Racine, Wis., in 
eru, Ind., Stockbridge, Mass., and Bronxville, 
‘ew York. 

Another associate of Dr. Burk’s was Helen 
arkhurst, whose plan of individual instruction, 
amed the Dalton plan, after its first trial in the 
gh school in Dalton, Mass., has spread across 
‘e water, and is just now taking England by 
orm. 

In three years, the plan has been put into oper- 
ion in three thousand English schools, and ac- 
irding to Dr. C. W. Kimmins of the University 
* London, formerly an inspector of the London 
dunty Council, it is destined to have a profound 
fect on the whole of British education. Teach- 
§, children and parents are all enthusiastic about 
For years thoughtful teachers in England 
‘d been troubled by the insuperable difficulty of 
oviding adequate individual instruction in their 
tge classes. Economic necessity makes it impos- 





84 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


sible to reduce the size of teaching units, yet the 
results of modern psychological research and 0} 
mental testing show how greatly children differ ir 
their ability and in their capacity to advance ai 
a given rate of speed. In presenting a lesson t¢ 
a large class, therefore, the teacher realizes thai 
probably a bare third is following the pace she ha: 
set, that another third is capable of going faster 
but is idly marking time, while the remaining chil 
dren are straggling hopelessly in the rear. Under 
the requirements of her superiors, however, shé 
is expected to keep this malassorted group to: 
gether. By cajoling the quick, lashing the lag 
gards, and holding the mediocre up to the mark 
she must manage somehow to get the whole lo 
through the uniform examinations at the end 0/ 
the term and into the next grade or form. 

How to break up this deadening regimentatior 
without sacrificing the important social values 0: 
the class system had appeared an insoluble prob: 
lem to students of education in England, unti 
Miss Parkhurst’s plan was adopted in 1920 by 
Rosa Bassett of the Girls’ Secondary School a 
Streatham. The success of the experiment wa! 
almost incredible. It excited the interest of edit 
cators throughout England, and thousands of per 
sons visited Streatham to see the school in oper 
‘ation. Within a year hundreds of schools wer 


DISCOVERING THE INDIVIDUAL 85 


naking preparations for the adoption of the plan. 
.t is now widely used in all sorts of English 
ichools and colleges, primary and secondary 
‘chools, army and trade schools, manual training 
ind normal schools. A flourishing Dalton society 
jas been organized in London. Interest in the 
Man has spread to other countries, and it is be- 
ng tried out in some of the schools of Russia, 
xermany, Austria, Scandinavia, India, China, 
apan, South Africa and Australia. In America 
he Dalton methods are gradually winning recog- 
ition. 

_ The Old Guard critics of everything modern in 
ducation will doubtless see in the extension of 
ae Dalton plan merely another indication that 
ae schools are dominated by the whims of fash- 
yn. Those who know teachers and understand 
aeir problems will not content themselves with 
2 easy an explanation. Almost all teachers are 
ainfully alive to their duty to instruct efficiently 
ae children under their charge. A large pro- 
Ortion of them suffer chronically under a sense 
f failure. Teaching in such large classes as are 
tevitable in the modern public school produces 
psults that no one regards as satisfactory. Edu- 
ation is one field in which the methods of mass 
‘oduction are disastrous. And the merit by 
hich the Dalton plan has recommended itself is 











86 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


its bold abandonment of the methods of mass 
production. 

Under the plan, the classroom recitation is 
abolished. Except for certain group activities, 
the children work entirely as individuals, and each 
child is set free to cover the required ground at 
whatever hours and at whatever pace seems best 
to him. Mimeographed sheets containing the 
work to be done in all subjects for a month are 
given each pupil and he assumes the entire respon-+ 
sibility for completing the assignment within the 
time specified if possible. As soon as he has 
completed one assignment he is permitted to go 
on with the next month’s “job.” He is neither 
hurried because some other pupils finish their as- 
signments more quickly, nor held back because 
some work at a slower pace. 

Fifteen minutes daily is usually set aside as 

“organization time,” during which the pupils dis: 
cuss their problems and difficulties with the class 
adviser. Before the close of the morning session) 
all the members of each grade are called into cons 
ference by the various specialists to discuss a defit 
nite part of the job and each member is calle 
upon for his viewpoint of the work. j 

Instead of the classroom the Dalton school ha$ 
work-shops, or as Miss Parkhurst prefers to call 
them, “laboratories,” each fully equipped for 4 









DISCOVERING THE INDIVIDUAL 87 


special subject. Maps, pictures and globes, the 
sand table and other necessary equipment are col- 
lected in the geography laboratory, and in an ad- 
joining room, if possible, are placed the books, 
charts and apparatus commonly used for the study 
of history. 

Each laboratory has its own teacher, a specialist 
whenever available, whose function is to answer 
questions, make suggestions and exercise a neces- 
sary oversight of the work done. It is no part 
‘of the teacher’s task to hold the pupils up to the 
performance of a given lesson, to cram knowl- 
edge into their heads whether they will or no. 
The laboratories are not supervised study rooms, 
out rather places where the children recite, some- 
times to the teacher, sometimes to one another. 
Primarily, says Miss Parkhurst, these laboratories 
are for learning. Time tables were invented for 
teaching, a very different matter. The Dalton 
lan stakes all its hopes on the wish and the will 
‘to learn of the children themselves. 

This is the radical kernel in the Dalton plan. 
[t appears almost revolutionary when one consid- 
‘rs how educators through the ages have worked 
on the assumption that the child’s will is an ob- 
stacle to be overcome by coercion—by threats, 
‘lows, bad marks, public disgrace—or by the ca- 
jolery of rewards or artificial interest created by 





88 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


applying the art of salesmanship to the teacher’s 
wares. Only sporadically has any effort been 
definitely made to enlist the child’s will as an ac- 
tive force in the learning process. Yet every one 
knows that outside the schoolroom the children 
are eager for new experiences, and go straight- 
forwardly about the business of getting them. 
The initiative is there, but it can find no expres- 
sion in the artificial atmosphere of the classroom 
with its system of bells, uniform periods and 
mechanical shifting from one task to another. 
School living, Miss Parkhurst holds, might well 
take its model from home life. “At home a child 
moves as an individual from room to room with- 
out permission and without confusion. He goes 
to get something. It is this extremely simple but 
valuable fact that we utilize, and which makes 
and secures harmony and true social life under 
the Dalton plan.” The pupils have their jobs, 
they know what they have to do, they go in and 
out of the several laboratories at will, in search’ 
of the necessary teacher or book or materials they 
need. Each child notes on his “job card,” kept in) 
graph form, his daily progress in terms of units” 
of work completed. He soon learns to budget his 
time, and to distribute it according to his special 
needs and difficulties. “How a pupil manages his” 
job or project is bound to affect his whole life. 





DISCOVERING THE INDIVIDUAL 89 


The job tests his powers and through it, he ex- 
presses himself ; he learns to evaluate himself and 
his work. Subject antipathies disappear ; they are 
weaknesses which can be made to disappear by 
proper distribution of\time.”’ * 

The Dalton plan is revolutionary as to method 
alone, not as to the content or aim of instruction. 
If the object of education is ability to write a 
letter in good English and execute arithmetical 
computations correctly, the Dalton method an- 
swers. It also answers if the object of education 
is conceived more broadly. Cultivation of indi- 
vidual initiative facilitates the execution of any 
task. This conservatism, or neutrality, in matter 
of content and aim seems to account in some 
measure at least for the widespread popularity 
of the plan. Old fashioned schoolmen and 
parents might object seriously to the substitution 
of newer material for the traditional subjects. 
They have no reason to object to a method by 
which the traditional subjects are learned more 
quickly and thoroughly. 

The progressive leaders of the movement rec- 
ognize that it does not in itself meet the objec- 
tions to the accepted cumicyicin, But a curricu- 
lum, as Miss Parkhurst says, “is dead without 


1“The Dalton Laboratory Plan,’ by Helen Parkhurst, 
‘Progressive Education, April, 1924. 


go OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


the live motive power of the child.”” She is there- 
fore more interested in developing that motive 
power than in questions pertaining to the cur- 
riculum. The first task as she sees it is to have 
“the ground made ready for the seed.” This may 
quiet doubts about the ultimate tendency of the 
plan, but it does not wholly eradicate them. Ina 
Dalton school, a child may cover with the utmost 
energy and eagerness all the ground required in 
arithmetic, but formal arithmetical problems, 
papering a mythical room for example, or com- 
puting imaginary profits and losses, may be the 
last thing he should be worrying his head about 
at that particular time. Unless the curriculum is 
carefully adjusted to the child’s needs, the plan 
might become the emptiest of cramming processes 
with the premium put on the mere amassing of 
information. It is reported that under the Dalton 
plan, as one teacher puts it, “the surplus energy 
of the reprobate having lost its usual means of 
expression, is now absorbed in the game of pass- 
ing grades.” The game of passing grades is no 
doubt a more useful one than many others and less 
trying to the observer. But that peace for the 
teacher is purchased at a heavy price if the chil- 
dren become so absorbed in this game as to lose 
their spontaneity of preference among subjects 
and activities. After all, the restiveness of the 


DISCOVERING THE INDIVIDUAL OI 


children under the traditional method of instruc- 
tion was an important force making for progress 
in the content as well as methods of instruction. 

The Dalton plan may represent a long step in 
advance if it is not taken too complacently. Many 
schools which hesitate to initiate sweeping 
change may, by beginning with the Dalton plan, 
fall into the way of genuine educational reform. 
Assignments in textbooks may be supplemented by 
work in science laboratories, work-shops, art 
studios, and music rooms, as is done in the Chil- 
dren’s University Schooi in New York City under 
Miss Parkhurst’s personal direction. A correla- 
tion may be made between academic and hand 
work, as in the Manhattan Trade School for 
Girls. Here the pupils in the process of learn- 
ing their several trades, dressmaking, millinery, 
novelty making, and machine operating, have their 
academic work presented to them in terms of their 
actual work in the trade course. Arithmetic re- 
quired in the cutting room is studied in the arith- 
metic laboratory and bears a direct relation to the 
work on which the girl is engaged. 


II 


The Winnetka plan, initiated by Carleton W. 
‘Washburne has certain points in common with 


92 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


the Dalton plan. Like Miss Parkhurst, Supt. 
Washburne has abolished the ordinary recitation 
and the rigid time table and put into the hands 
of the children assignments prepared in advance. 
There are however certain differences. 

The Winnetka plan allows for more complete 
individualization by subjects. No child under the 
Dalton plan may progress in any subject until 
he has finished all the month’s assignments in the 
other subjects. In Winnetka, there is no such 
limitation. Moreover, while the Dalton plan ac- 
cepts the course of study of the school in which 
it is introduced, and merely breaks it up into 
monthly assignments, the Winnetka material is 
prepared after long investigation of what is most 
modern in type and content. Only the three R’s 
or the common essentials are taught by the indi- 
vidual method in Winnetka. Every child, says 
Supt. Washburne, needs to know how to read 
with a certain speed and comprehension, needs to 
know certain elements in arithmetic, needs to be 
able to spell words in common use, and to know 
something about persons, places and events to 
which constant reference is made. What these 
minimum essentials are in each subject, Supt. 
Washburne is seeking to determine in coOperation 
with other educators. For example, the depart- 
ment of research in the Boston schools has 





DISCOVERING THE INDIVIDUAL 93 


analyzed all types of addition of fractions from 
the standpoint of difficulties. The National So- 
ciety for the Study of Education has discovered 
that trade and industry and the ordinary opera- 
tions of life require no denominators higher than 
12 in the original addends (of course the common 
denominator may be higher). The Winnetka 
teachers have carefully checked the degree of 
speed possible to the slowest normal child, and 
have found that four examples in three minutes 
is attainable. Therefore the assignment in addi- 
tion of fractions reads thus: “Be able to work 
four problems in three minutes with Ioo percent 
accuracy, the examples to contain denominators 
of 12 and under, to contain three addends, and to 
involve changing to a common denominator, ad- 
dition of mixed numbers and to lowest terms.” ? 
_ Acchild who is ready to begin fractions is given 
a fraction practice book (prepared by the teach- 
ers). This book is self-instructive. In using it, 
the child requires a minimum of help from teacher 
or classmates. Only one step is taken at a time 
and much practice is provided for that step before 
proceeding to the next. In learning to add frac- 
jtions, there are some nineteen steps, beginning 
‘with the simple operation of cutting out cardboard 


/ 2The Winnetka Plan of Individual Work,” The Teachers 
‘World, Dec., 1922. 


94. OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


circles, cutting these in two and labeling each 
piece 14, and ending with a miscellaneous exer- 
cise which includes every practical difficulty in 
adding fractions. | 
Such practice books have been prepared for all 
elementary grades in arithmetic, for several | 
grades in language, and also for history-geogra- | 
phy. In time it is expected that this self-instruc- | 
tion material will be available in final commercial | 
form. Already a volume has been published in | 
spelling, and another in general science.* | 
In using these books, the child tests himself by 
means of an answer sheet as he completes each } 
step, and when he has covered a given operation | 
—such as for instance the addition of fractions— } 
he first gives himself a practice test for it, and | 
then goes to the teacher for a real test. This test | 
is very complete, and is so keyed that the teacher | 
can tell at a glance where the child’s difficulty lies, | 
No one is permitted to proceed to the next “goal” | 
until he has successfully passed the one preceding, | 
The results of this method have been found by | 
statistical study to be an increase of efficiency, a | 
saving of one or two hours daily, and a saving | 
of from one to three years in eight. Best of ! 
all, no child in the Winnetka schools ever repeats : 


8“The Individual Speller” and “Common Science” are | 
both published by the World Book Company. tT 





DISCOVERING THE INDIVIDUAL 95 


grade. Thus the yearly or half yearly tragedy 
if non-promotion is completely eliminated. 
_ Only half the day is given to these common es- 
entials as the Winnetka schools are organized 
n the platoon plan. (See next chapter.) The 
ther half—part of each morning and of each 
fternoon—is devoted to creative and group ac- 
tvities. Here there are no known goals, no scien- 
ific principles to act as guides. But clearly for 
elf-expression, says Supt. Washburne, children 
aust be given freedom and the opportunity to 
xpress what is in them. Such opportunities are 
rovided in the multiform activities which the 
hildren undertake. There are plays, open forums, 
elf-government meetings, debates, the publica- 
ion of a school paper, to which the youngest child 
aay contribute, and the management of which is 
athe hands of the seventh and eighth grade chil- 
ren, there are excursions, innumerable commit- 
2es, free work in art, in shops and even in music. 
supt. Washburne does not expect this work to be 
trictly correlated to the individual work. If it 
an, well and good. But the teachers are not re- 
uired to “strain” themselves to bring into social 
'¥ group activities, arithmetic, spelling, punctua- 
.on, or handwriting. 

It is these special activities that seem to us the 
host hopeful feature of the Winnetka schools. 


96 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 













They are, as Supt. Washburne admits, mor 
important than the individual work. Data maj 
be available to prove that children save tim 
when working individually, but time saving if 
not all there is to training, even in the essentials 
Moreover according to recent educational think) 
ing, it is a serious mistake to divorce the tool sub} 
jects from “‘life situations,” and to introduce th¢ 
element of drill before the pupil himself becomes 
aware of the necessity for it. 

There are also certain unanswered question¢ 
which apply both to the Dalton and the Winnetka) 
methods. At the 1924 Convocation of the Uni- 
versity of the State of New York Dr. Otis W) 
Caldwell of the Lincoln School raised several of| 
these questions: “Is not this plan for fragment+| 
ing and ticketing subject matter in small individ- 
ual units in danger of leading us to formal and) 
finished notions of thought units, thus producing 
new types of rigidity more binding than those! 
from which we would free the pupils? Is subject| 
matter for current social effective living capable) 
of being set in lessons or units which can be ade-| 
quately sensed without the constant suggestive 
thought and group experience of others of the! 
pupils’ own age and stage of life? Can the pupil) 
be adequately educated by himself, his assign=| 
ments and his skillful teacher? . . . Should not! 


DISCOVERING THE INDIVIDUAL 97 


upils gain the often disquieting knowledge that 
lany very important considerations are still on 
isecure foundations and that such topics can not 
e presented as satisfying and finished tasks ?” * 

Neither the Dalton nor the Winnetka plans are 
ads, a passing fashion, to be forgotten in a brief 
ecade. In substituting individual for mass in- 
truction, the pupil’s initiative for the teacher’s 
dercion, they have taken a position from which 
1ey cannot be expelled. But if their results are 
) be really significant, they must associate them- 
salves with reform that goes beyond method. In 
really free and creative environment, children 
O not require the paraphernalia and rigid sub- 
ivisions of goal or contract books in order to 
‘arn the “essentials.” They learn them natu- 
ally and “in their stride’ as they go about af- 
airs that have meaning and reality to them. 
nly under such conditions can the schools be said 
) minister to the individual, instead of to the 
tandards to which they have hitherto insisted the 
idividual must conform. 


4 School and Society, December 27, 1924. 


VIII 
WORK-STUDY-PLAY SCHOOLS? 


It is a full decade since a series of enthusiasti: 
books and articles were first written about thi 
schools of Gary, Ind. John Dewey and Evely: 
Dewey in their “Schools of Tomorrow,” Ran 
dolph Bourne in his “Gary Schools,” W. P 
Burris, in his pamphlet published by the Unitec 
States Bureau of Education were chief among 
those to draw nation-wide attention to the re. 
markable achievements of William Wirt and hi! 
“work-study-play” idea. Seldom has the populai 
notion of education undergone such rapid expan: 
sion as in the few years following these early 
publications. The “little Red Schoolhouse” witt 
its humble classrooms and ill-equipped shop ot 
two, gave way suddenly before the picture of 4 
vast palatial structure containing art galleries and 
studios, music rooms and science laboratories, 
libraries and swimming pools, gardens and play- 
grounds, ten acres in size, shops of every kind, 

1 For the original source material quoted in this chapter 


the writer is much indebted to Alice Barrows of the U. S. 
Bureau of Education. | 


98 


WORK-STUDY-PLAY SCHOOLS 99 


or carpentry, cabinet and paint, for foundry, 
orge and sheet metal work, for electricity and 
rinting, for domestic science and sewing—all the 
ivish equipment of some richly endowed institu- 
on of higher learning, or a wealthy private 
thool, now for the first time made available on 
) complete a scale for public school children of 
ie elementary grades.” This equipment, it was 
xplained was not extravagance, nor fads and 
‘ills. It was indeed the kind of thing long 
tdently desired by progressive educators every- 
here, but hitherto provided only incompletely be- 
iuse of the prohibitive cost to the taxpayer. The 
ary schools could afford them because as will 
2 explained in more detail presently, Mr. Wirt 
ad applied the principle of multiple use of the 
thool plant, thus releasing funds that would 
therwise have been tied up in classroom space, 
or the additional facilities. 

Lavish equipment however was not the only 
markable feature of the Gary schools. Says 
andolph Bourne, “The Gary schools represent 
e fruit of a very unusual combination of educa- 
onal philosophy, economic engineering, and po- 
‘ical Sagacity . . . what we have to deal with 


See description of the Emerson and Froebel schools in 
2 “Gary Schools” by Randolph Bourne, Houghton Mifflin 
Co., 1916, pp. 20 ff. 


I0O OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


























is an educational idea, a comprehensive plan fo 
the modern public school, capable of gener 
imitation and adaption to the needs of othe 
American communities.” Among the many im 
portant achievements and innovations which bot 
he and the Deweys discuss are the social func 
tioning of the schools in the community and o 
the children in their schools, the converging of al 
work and study upon school life, the wide use b; 
adults of the school plant, the long school day 
school week and school year, the full use made b 
the school of such community resources as church: 
settlements, civic and social organizations, as wel 
as other municipal departments, the democrati 
form of student government, the wholesome in 
termingling of older and younger children 1: 
shops and laboratories, the housing of grade an: 
high schools in one building, and the unique re 
lation between the training provided in the man: 
school shops and the maintenance of the schoo 
plant. For the first time, according to these earl 
reports, there had evolved under public schoc 
conditions a real school community which aime: 
“to put the whole child to school,” and to restor 
to him some of his lost heritage of wholesom 
work and play. 

“It is impossible,’ says Prof. Dewey, “t 
exaggerate the amount of mental and moral trai 


WORK-STUDY-PLAY SCHOOLS IOI 


ng secured by our forefathers in the course of 
he ordinary pursuits of life. They were engaged 
a subduing a new country. Industry was at a 
Temium and instead of being of a routine nature 
ioneer conditions required initiative, ingenuity 
nd pluck. . . . Production had not yet been con- 
entrated in factories in congested centers, but 
vas distributed through villages. . . . The occu- 
ations of daily life engaged the imagination and 
aforced knowledge of natural materials and 
tocesses. . . . Children had the discipline that 
ume from sharing in useful activities. .. . 
Inder such conditions the schools could hardly 
ave done better than devote themselves to books. 
, . But conditions changed and school materials 
ad methods did not change to keep pace. Popu- 
tion shifted to urban centers. Production be- 
ume a mass affair carried on in big factories, in- 
ead of a household affair. . . . Industry was no 
nger a local or neighborhood concern. Manu- 
\cturing was split up into a very great variety 
: Separate processes through the economies inci- 
‘nt upon extreme division of labor. . . . The 
achine worker, unlike the older hand worker, 
following blindly the intelligence of others in- 
ead of his own knowledge of materials, tools 
id processes. . . . Children have lost the moral 
id practical discipline that once came from shar- 


102 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


ing in the round of home duties. For a large 
number there is little alternative, especially ir 
large cities, between irksome child labor and de- 
moralizing child idleness.” 

This conception that the schools must overcome 
the demoralizing influences for children of mod- 
ern city life is one of Mr. Wirt’s cardinal prin- 
ciples. It is expressed in his first report of the 
Gary schools written in 1908, and in his most 
recent pronouncements as well. “The main busi- 
ness of the school,” he writes in 1908, “is tc 
utilize to the best advantage the time that the 
child spends in school. As a matter of fact how- 
ever in most sections of the city, the greatest 
problem of the school is to counteract and over- 
come the demoralizing influences of the child's 
life in the streets and alleys and unfortunately ir 
many homes, so called.” 

In an unpublished article, “Making the City a 
Fit Place for the Rearing of Children,’ Mr. Wirt 
is even’more emphatic. “It is absolutely neces: 
sary for the perpetuity of our race,” he states, 
“that the relative population of the city be re- 
duced or that the cities be made fit places for the 
rearing of children. The city home is no longet 
able profitably to occupy all the time of the chil 
out of school. The city school does not have suf: 
ficient time for the general education of the child. 


WORK-STUDY-PLAY SCHOOLS 103 


On the other hand it is the city streets and alleys, 
amusement halls and gambling dens, which pro- 
vide activities on the average for all the children 
of the cities for over five hours of the day for 
the 365 days of the year. 

“It is this life of the child during the five hours 
of the day in the streets and alleys that molds 
his character and educates him in the wrong di- 
rection. These five hours a day on the streets 
must be eliminated from the life of the city child 
before the cities can be made fit places for the 
rearing of children. 

“The cities must have an institution that will 
provide constructive activities at work and play as 
a substitute for the present five hours a day of 
destructive activities. These wholesome activities 
for work and play should be provided in connec- 
tion with the child’s study school, where he may 
spend the day in study, work and play. Not only 
will the wholesome work and play be a substitute 
for the demoralizing activities of the streets and 
alleys, but planned in connection with the study 
school will motivate and give new vitality to the 
child’s study hours.” 

The school of course has always been subject 
to pressure from those both within and without 
the school system who seek to expand or modify 
the curriculum in response to changing social and 


104. OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


economic conditions. While its response has been 
slow, it is nevertheless true that the evolution of 
the school curriculum parallels closely the evolu- 
tion of society. The present unwieldy and con- 
glomerate assortment of “subjects” contained in 
existing courses of study is at least indicative of 
an attempt to train children for the highly com- 
plex—and little understood—requirements of 
modern life. The curriculum indeed has changed 
much more rapidly than have teaching methods 
and administrative organization. The simple 
reading, writing and reckoning, considered suf- 
ficient in early days, could easily enough be 
taught to children seated at their desks and con- 
fined for their materials to text book and copy 
paper. Yet this set up with a few variations is 
supposed to suffice for the manifold demands of 
the existing curriculum. In a large percent of 
American cities, many buildings are without 
such elementary provisions as auditoriums, play- 
grounds or manual training shops. Even where 
these features are present, the children actually 
spend very little time in them. By far the greater 
amount of their time is spent in their classrooms 
where the teacher at her desk is supposed to dole 
out appropriate amounts of music, nature study, 
hygiene, physiology, drawing, hand work, besides 
the more formal work in reading, writing, arith- 


WORK-STUDY-PLAY SCHOOLS 105 


‘metic, history, geography, spelling, civics, or such 
extras, as thrift, Americanization, safety first or 
patriotism. 

Mr. Wirt boldly affirmed that a modern cur- 
‘ticulum could not be taught under such primitive 
‘conditions. Children, he declared, cannot learn 
through “hypodermic injections of concentrated 
doses of scholastic subject matter.’”’ Two or 
three hours daily he argued was sufficient time 
for children to be confined to school desks study- 
‘ing the formal tool subjects. For the rest of 
their school day, it was far better for them to be 
gaining experiences at first hand in specially 
equipped workshops, studios, science laboratories, 
auditoriums, and libraries, or having the oppor- 
‘tunity for thoroughly sound physical develop: 
ment in gymnasiums, swimming pools and play- 
grounds. 

Manifestly, he argued further, a classroom 
could easily be alternately used by two groups of 
children, since neither group needs to be in it 
more than two or three hours. Thus by skillful 
programming, the capacity of a given building 
might be greatly increased, for two sets or 
“platoons” of children might be kept alternating 
between classrooms and the special facilities. 
This principle of multiple use, Mr. Wirt argues, 
is well enough known in the management of pub- 


106 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


lic utilities and other adult resources. Why should 
it not be applied to public schools ? 

“The reason why the city does not meet the 
needs of children as it meets the needs of adults,” 
Mr. Wirt writes, “is because the same economic 
principles are not applied in the operation of child 
welfare agencies that are applied in the operation 
of adult welfare agencies. | 

“In the city I can have a picture to look at in 
my public art gallery only because a lot of other 
people look at this picture when I do not want to 
look at it. I can have a park to enjoy only be- 
cause a lot of other people enjoy this park when 
I do not want to enjoy it. . . . I can have a street 
car or a taxicab to ride in when I wish to do so 
only because a lot of other people ride in them 
when I do not want to. ... 

“The whole trouble is that we try to provide a 
school seat in a classroom for the exclusive use | 
of each child. Then we try to have an auditorium | 
large enough to seat all the children, which is the | 
same thing as providing an auditorium seat for 
each child’s exclusive use. All children play at 
one time at recess which is the same thing as pro- 
viding for each child a playground. The same 
thing is true with the manual training shops, and | 
in a measure for all child welfare facilities. Chil- | 
dren must all be in school at one time and then 





a oom 


WORK-STUDY-PLAY SCHOOLS 107, 


when dismissed from school they have the oppor- 
tunity to go to the library practically all at one 
ime... 

“What would we think of the management of 
a street car company that insisted upon everybody 
tiding to the same point and in the same direc- 
tion at one time? Under such a plan, street cars 
would be impossible and so would every type of 
public service. The management of all types of 
public service, excepting schools, attempts to bal- 
ance the load on their respective facilities as much 
as possible. The electric lighting companies, for 
instance, offer reduced rates for current used in 
the day time in order to equalize their load. In 
place of using the balanced load principle, tradi- 
tional school managers insist on making the load 
on their facilities as unbalanced as possible. That 
is why it has been impossible for cities to pro- 
vide adequate facilities for children. Without the 
application of multiple use and balanced load 
principles the people in the cities cannot do for 
themselves collectively through public service 
agencies any more than they can do as private 
individuals. ‘The city has not been able, there- 
fore, to meet the needs of its children to the extent 
that it has met the needs of adults... .”° 


_ 3 Unpublished report of the School Building Survey of 
Portland, Ore., conducted by U. S. Bur. of Educ., 1923. 


108 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


In a work-study-play school however, the 
“load” is distributed between the classrooms and 
the various facilities. Instead of all children be- 
ing in school seats when school begins, half will 
be in their classrooms, one-fourth in manual train- 
ing, music, art, science, history and geography 
rooms, one-eighth will be in the auditorium, and 
one-eighth in the physical training and play places, 
In a school for 1,200 children, only 600 school 
seats will be needed for classrooms, 300 seats for 
special activities, 150 auditorium seats and play 
space for I50. ; 

The money saving is obvious. A classroom 
costs approximately $12,000. In a 30-class Wirt 
school, therefore, only 15 classrooms would be 
needed, making available 1 5 times $12,000 for 
additional facilities. Naturally the amount saved 
depends upon how many additional facilities are 
secured. Superintendents of nineteen school Sys- 
tems reported to the U. S. Bureau of Education 
increases in housing capacity ranging from ten 
to seventy percent.* In studying the future build- 
ing needs of Portland, Ore., the Survey Com- 
mittee recently concluded that estimates for a sat- 


* “First National Conference on the Work-Study-Play or 
Platoon Plan,” by Alice Barrows, U. S. Bureau of Educa- 
tion bulletin, 1922, No. 35. 





WORK-STUDY-PLAY SCHOOLS I0Q 


isfactory school plant on the traditional plan by 
1937 showed that $23,962,150 would need to be 
expended, and that an excess capacity in the entire 
city of only 132 classes would thus be provided. 
On the work-study-play plan only $14,564,650 
would need to be spent, providing an excess ca- 
‘pacity of 206 classes. The difference in cost 
therefore is approximately $9,397,500 for the 
thirteen years or an average annual difference of 
$722,873. This amount can be saved annually 
to the taxpayer. 

Similarly in Detroit, where the platoon school 
is in operation in eighty buildings, a study was 
made of comparative costs in fifteen schools of 
‘the platoon and non-platoon form of organiza- 
‘tion. It was found that the same number of 
pupils taught under the non-platoon organization 
could by the introduction of the platoon plan re- 
ceive more instruction by the use of thirty less 
rooms, and 15.9 fewer teachers. The thirty 
rooms with a capacity of forty each, might be used 
to house 1,200 more pupils... . Even though 
additional salaries must be paid to auditorium and 
gymnasium teachers in the platoon schools, the 
net annual saving in salaries under this plan would 
be $21,820. ‘Thus,’ concludes Deputy Super- 
intendent Spain, “good salaries can be appor- 
tioned highly trained special teachers, and the 


IIo OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


platoon system still prove more economical than 
the non-platoon.” 5 

Mr. Wirt however everywhere makes clear that 
“while the work-study-play plan does make pos- 
sible a substantial saving to the taxpayer, that is 
not the primary purpose of the work-study-play 
school. It is the purpose of this school to make 
the cities good places in which to rear children. 
No other question is of more vital importance to 
the American nation.” 

This feature of “multiple use’ has commended 
the Wirt type of school organization widely to 
practical schoolmen throughout the country. 
Although the attempt to introduce the plan into. 
New York City failed disastrously in 1917, due 


mainly to political opposition, it has been spread- | 
ing with increasing momentum in other parts of 


the country. The name now generally adopted is 
the “platoon” school, although “work-study- 


play” and “duplicate” schools are terms also 


widely in use. The latest list of cities having 
such an organization in one or more schools 
numbers ninety-three in thirty states, and in- 
cludes such large centers as Pittsburgh and De- 
troit, which have officially adopted it for all 
elementary schools, and also Philadelphia, Balti- 


5“The Platoon School,” by Charles L. Spain, Ph.D., New 
York, The Macmillan Company, 1924. 





WORK-STUDY-PLAY SCHOOLS Irr 


nore, Newark, Rochester, Cleveland, St. Paul, 
lallas, Sacramento, Seattle and Portland, Oregon. 
0 interested have superintendents of schools be- 
ome in the plan, that the United States Bureau 
f Education has called four annual conferences 
fh it to discuss practical problems of administra- 
on. The conferences are held in conjunction 
‘ith the meeting of the Department of Superin- 
mdence of the National Education Association. 
ight national committees appointed by the Com- 
ussioner of Education, are constantly at work, 
athering material to report to the conferences on 
ich questions as use of the auditorium, build- 
ig program, organization, training of teachers, 
lusic, special activities, play and education of 
ublic opinion. Several teacher training schools 
ad summer schools have included special courses 
h some aspect of the plan. 

The plan has been adapted in many different 
rms. No two programs are the same, the length 
f the school day varies from city to city, so also 
des the kind and amount of additional equipment 
ad facilities provided, the amount of depart- 
lentalizing of subject matter, the use made of the 
iditorium, and the amount of vocational training 
forded. No city has adopted all the interesting 
‘atures of the Gary schools. Gary is still unique 
| the broad use by adults of the school plant, in 


| 


: 


II2 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 
















the eight hours school day, in the large volunta 
attendance of children and adults in Saturday an 
summer school, in the degree to which vocationa 
work contributes to the maintenance of the schoo 
plant, and many other innovations. It is o! 
course also true that some cities have adopted th 
platoon organization merely or mainly as an econ 
omy device, or to relieve congestion, and have 
added few additional facilities to existing plants 

By far the greater number of superintendent: 
experimenting with the plan, however, have beer 
impressed by its educational possibilities. In dis. 
cussing its possibilities, these men use language 
quite different from the old type “administrator.” 
Says W. F. Kennedy, director of Platoon Schools 
in Pittsburgh: 


The following are the objectives that largely 
determined the activities and organization in th 
early days of our experiment (1916) and stil 
control the movement : 

I. Enrich children’s experiences. 

a. An enriched curriculum. 

b. Enriched teaching. 

c. Enriched associations. 

d. Fresher interests native to child life, 

II. Socialize and democratize the activities of 
school life. | 

ITI. Develop an atmosphere in terms of de- 
partments, an attitude of hunger for worthwhile 


WORK-STUDY-PLAY SCHOOLS II3 


yursuits and habit of planning in children, and a 
{rowing vision of something ahead. 

_IV. Emphasize the process in education rather 
han the product. 

_V. All educational development should be 
jased on the native characteristics of children, 
uch as activity, curiosity, imitation, imagination, 
lesire to work with tools and materials, etc, 
_VI. School life should be made pleasant. 
Tappiness is an important educational objective. 


_ The above objectives controlled the selection of 
zachers, the organization of the curriculum, and 
ae working out of the whole schedule of opera- 
ons. It meant that teachers should teach those 
abjects with which they were in tune, for which 
1ey had an appreciation and definite preparation. 
{meant that the characteristics of childhood and 
1e demands of life should be largely the basis of 
ie selection of the subjects of the curriculum. 
+ meant that opportunity should be furnished to 
apils to express themselves naturally, to practice 
‘lf-control, to exercise initiative and responsi- 
lity, to appreciate freedom, and to develop poise 
id personality. It meant that teachers were to 
> helpers, leaders and friends of children, and 
ot checkers, detectives and faultfinders. It meant 
at children should have a voice in working out 
ans, suggesting situations and criticizing results. 
‘nd it definitely meant that this school should 
ive the atmosphere of a cheerful home, and if 
‘'y and happiness were not constantly in evidence 
‘mie part of the machinery was wrong. 

















II4 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


A number of superintendents who have experi- 
mented with the plan, discuss its advantages ir 
terms of the educational philosophy of Johr 
Dewey and William Kilpatrick. “The platoor 
school,” writes C. F. Perrott of Stuttgart 
Arkansas, “is a distinct and important factor ir 
the educative process. . . . It creates an oppor: 
tunity for an enriched curriculum for all out 
school children, more especially of the elementary 
schools. ... . It is a known fact that only one- 
fifth of our elementary school pupils ever react 
high school. ... The dull routine of our ele- 
mentary school is largely responsible. 

“In the platoon school, the shop, laboratory 
garden, libraries, dramatization, play and game: 
are used freely. Dewey says of this that wher« 
such opportunities exist for reproducing life situa: 
tions or progressive experiences, we have rea’ 
thinking. Such thinking is possible where be- 
sides the ordinary classrooms we have play- 
grounds, shops, music and drawing studios, gym: 
nasiums and intimate and constant contact with 
supplementary activity outside the school for the 
children. . . . When thought is continually 
hedged in by authority, courses of study, the four 
walls of a classroom, and continual silence, think: 
ing instead of being encouraged is thwarted at 
every “pont aie | 


WORK-STUDY-PLAY SCHOOLS Ir5 


_ “The development of the platoon school is un- 
IBubtedly j in great part an outgrowth of the idea 
hat extrinsic subject matter does not permit the 
ullest life. Dr. Kilpatrick is of the opinion that 
ince the elementary school is an institution estab- 
Shed by society for the education of its children, 
t would seem that its most consistent function 
rould be to provide an environment that furthers 
te continuous growing of its pupils, an environ- 
tent that affords them practice in the selection 
nd successful realization of aims, I am not go- 
ig to insist that the platoon school is ideally fitted 
nd suited to carry out this philosophy. At the 
resent time it affords the nearest approach to a 
alution of the problem that we have. . . .” 
Other advantages observed by superintendents 
fter a trial of the plan include improved health 
f pupils, increased self-control, initiative and in- 
ependence, happier attitude towards school— 
the children are decidedly for it”—fewer disci- 
inary troubles, less fatigue and monotony, it 
linimizes lockstep, socializes the school, subject 
atter better handled by teachers, who have fewer 
Ibjects to teach, and certain subjects are taught 
7 those specially fitted for them, . . . “it does 
way with listless teaching through an enriched 
irriculum which makes the teacher aware of the 
‘eadth of the child’s needs, mentally, physically 


116 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


and morally. . . . It places a better proportior 
and value upon both mental work and all othe: 
activities ss: Ne : 
One result worth perhaps special emphasis i: 
the improvement recorded in academic work 
This is encouraging because the tunfavorabl 
showing made by the children in Gary schools a’ 
the time of the survey of the General Educatior 
Board, received wide publicity. In 1922, anothei 
survey was made in Indiana. Tests were giver 
in reading, spelling, arithmetic and history t 
children in Gary and in other school systems 11 
the state. Returns showed that the Gary childrer 
scored higher in all grades in history and geog: 
raphy than children in other Indiana cities, It 
particular, the scores of Gary children in though 
questions in history were five to seven point: 
higher than those of children in traditiona 
schools. In reading and spelling, Gary childret 
did better in three grades and not so well it 
others.° 
In 1923, the Department of Educational Re 
search of Detroit made public the results of ¢ 
study carried on for several years of the academi 
standing of children in platoon and non-platoor 
schools. Standard tests were applied in reading 
penmanship, arithmetic, spelling, and geography 
6 Data secured from U. S. Bureau of Education. 





WORK-STUDY-PLAY SCHOOLS 117 


| “Taken as a whole,” writes Stuart A. Courtis, 
Director of the Department of Instruction, 
veacher Training and Research, “‘the results from 
tandard tests show that in both actual and com- 
arative achievement, in efficiency of instruction, 
1 type of school affected, and in the efficiency of 
lupervisory control, the platoon schools in Detroit 
‘ave, so far, done fully as well as, and probably 
etter than the conventional schools as far as in- 
‘ruction in the drill subjects is concerned.” ? 

_ Tabulations, based upon a study of results over 
period of four years, showed that the schools 
tganized four years ago were far above the city 
tedian; those organized three years ago were 
‘so considerably above; and those organized less 
jan two years, who were passing through a 
triod of readjustment were slightly below the 
ty median, but constantly improving their scores. 
_An item from the Clip Sheet sent out by the 
‘nited States Bureau of Education for June, 
325, states that of fifth grade children in work- 
udy-play schools in Gary, seventy-five percent 
‘ach the eighth grade. Fifty-three percent of all 
gh school graduates from the same schools go 
\ college. Twenty percent of all children who 
iter elementary schools in Gary enter college in 


™*The Platoon School in Detroit,” by Charles L. Spain, 
ae Detroit Educational Bulletin, No. 2, 1923, p. 66 


118 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


due course: that is three times as many as the cor- 
responding ratio for the country at large. 

The platoon school has been attacked by both 
conservatives and radicals in education. It has 
also unfortunately been opposed by powerful po- 
litical groups. The argument used with suck 
deadly effect during the Mayoralty campaign ir 
New York City, that the Gary plan is a device 
of the “interests” to fit the child for the mill anc 
sweat shop, is of course not worth serious atten: 
tion. At least it would not be had not a rathei 
considerable number of otherwise intelligen: 
labor ®* and socialist organizations also given i 
credence. The argument first had its basis in the 
large amount of training offered to children ir 
Gary schools to “work with their hands,” if 
specially equipped shops of all kinds. When ths 
educational value of such activity was made clear 
the argument shifted its base. Recently it ha 
taken refuge in the departmental system of teach 
ing which obtains in greater or less degree in | 
platoon schools. : 

In her minority report of one on the work 
study-play or platoon plan, submitted to the Chi 
cago Board of Education by the Education Com 
mission appointed by the Board in December 


8In June, 1924, the Detroit Federation issued a favorabl 
‘report on the Detroit platoon schools. 


WORK-STUDY-PLAY SCHOOLS IIgQ 


1923, Rose A. Pesta writes of the departmental 
‘system: “It is exactly the factory system applied 
to the education of the child. In the olden days 
a pair of shoes was made by one man, He put 
something of himself into the shoe—his individ- 
ual art—and he took a certain pride and joy in the 
completed product. In modern industry, the shoe 
passes through a number of hands, each doing a 
little here, a little there. Each is interested in 
doing efficiently his little job—not in the com- 
dleted job at all. That is what is recommended 
‘n the education of children in so far as they re- 
‘eive an education in special lines: each of the 
special teachers doing her little bit toward the edu- 
‘ation of that child with no possibility of any 
nterest in the complete process. . . .” 

The controversy over departmental work is of 
‘ourse an old one, and has long been waged out- 
ide the realm of the platoon school, Teachers 
‘f special subjects have for many years been ap- 
iointed in the upper grades of most school sys- 
ems. In most private schools, where groups are 
f course smaller, it has been carried far down 
ato the primary classes. Those in favor of it 
laim that teachers teach subjects best in which 
ley are most interested, that it is unreasonable to 
xpect one teacher to teach successfully the ever- 
icreasing sub jects in the modern curriculum, that 


120 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 
























it is better for children to come into contact with| 
different personalities, and with different methods} 
of presentation. Opponents claim that children, | 
young ones especially, need the “mothering” in-| 
fluence of a single individual, that specialist teach-| 
ers tend to exploit their specialty at the expense) 
of those they teach, that under them a child’s day 
loses unity, that successful “project” teaching,| 
now everywhere urged, is incompatible with de-| 
partmentalization, that special teachers cannot] 
possibly keep in personal touch with their pupils| 
since they meet several hundred a day, and many} 
more during the week, that the whole trend of 
educational thinking is away from a curriculum) 
organized on a subject basis, to one organized on| 
a conduct or activity basis.° | 

A partial answer made by those in charge of| 
work-study-play schools is that only part of the} 
work is departmentalized. At least two and a 
half hours daily is spent by each child in its) 
“home” room, under one teacher who teaches all 
the tool subjects. This arrangement is in turn 
criticized by those who feel that it is a mistake to! 
divorce the tool subjects from the subjects in 


See “Why I am Opposed to the Platoon Plan in Ele: 
mentary Schools,” by Frederick G. Bonser of Teachers Col- 
lege, Chicago Schools Journal, May, 1924. 


WORK-STUDY-PLAY SCHOOLS I2I 


drilled in arithmetic in vacuo, but only when he 
is aware of a given situation where drill is 
“aecessary. 

“Arithmetic,’ writes Dr. Kilpatrick, “we shall 
always need and shall always teach. The point is 
this. We learn better—certainly as a rule—when 
we face a situation calling for the use of the thing 
‘0 be learned. Other things being equal then, we 
shall try to teach arithmetic as it is needed. that 
$s in connection with situations of actual need. 
The effect of this will be to find arithmetic in 
nany little pieces scattered along the path of life. 
These we shall teach as we meet them. As we 
accumulate in this way a store of arithmetic, some 
of the pupils, particularly the more mathematically 
nelined, will from time to time put the pieces 
‘ogether and form wholes more or less complete. 
uater some will specialize in the subject... .” 
n the paragraph preceding this, Dr. Kilpatrick 
leclares that “separate subjects for children will 
lave to go.”’ *° 

This is of course going very much further than 
he work-study-play idea now proposes. The 
jlatoon school has accepted the modern curricu- 
um with its many subject divisions, and has at- 
empted to give it reality and vitality through ade- 


/ 10 “Foundations of Method,” by William H. Kilpatrick of 
Teachers College, The Macmillan Company, 1925, p. 357. 


I22 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


quate equipment and a well balanced program of 
activities. The plan makes no changes in class- 
room teaching, which must inevitably change radi- 
cally if real educational values are to be attained. 
“The present academic subjects are taught and 
must be, with our present limitations, taught as 
such,” writes John G. Rossman, Assistant Su- 
perintendent of Schools in Gary. ‘The greater 
part of the work of the teacher in the platoon 
school is not such as to require training different 
from that given in the usual normal school,” de- 
clares Charles A. Rice, Assistant Superintendent 
in Portland, Oregon. ‘A good teacher in a tra- 
ditional school will be a good teacher in the home 
room in a platoon school.” Similarly Edwin- Y. 
Montanye, principal of a “duplicate” school in 
Philadelphia states that there is “‘little difficulty 
in securing teachers for the academic subjects.” 

It is probably too much to expect, however, 
that the work-study-play school should be more 
than a liberating experiment in education. Al-) 
though vastly freer than the traditional school, it’ 
has not yet emerged from its stage of mechani-| 
zation. To accommodate rotating groups of chil-— 
dren smoothly and efficiently, programs must be 
observed with scrupulous exactness, so many min- | 
utes must be allotted to each activity, and shifts” 
must take place with speed and promptness. The 


WORK-STUDY-PLAY SCHOOLS 123 


plan still tolerates class units as large as forty, 
and it faces with equanimity school plants hous- 
ing two thousand children and more. 

In brief, the work-study-play plan is a magnifi- 
sent attempt at mass education, attempting, 
chrough the application of a principle well known 
‘ mass production—the balanced load—to pro- 
vide wholesale advantages to children without 
creasing school costs. Yet when one consid- 
ors the nature and variety of genuinely educative 
cnterprises that Mr. Wirt has managed to intro- 
luce into his schools, the extraordinary value of 
uis wholesale demonstration becomes apparent. 
robably nothing has done more to free the pub- 
ic mind from the notion that children can be 
sducated by being chained to school seats than 
he campaigns successively waged in different 
‘ities to introduce work-study-play schools. While 
he claim often made is valid that all the advan- 
ages of these schools exist (in part) and can be 
ybtained in traditionally organized systems, it still 
‘emains true that the platoon organization makes 
t possible for communities to provide such ad- 
‘antages for their children years earlier than they 
ould otherwise be persuaded to do so. 
It is probable that many of the shortcomings 
if the plan will pass with time. Superintendents 
dopting it are likely to be of the temper of Mr. 


124 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 





Wirt who welcomes educational experimentation | 
of every kind, even with curriculum and subject | 
matter. “Organic education” classes directed by | 
Mrs. Marietta Johnson of Fairhope, Alabama, | 
were planned for certain Wirt schools in New | 
York City. Attempts are likely to increase to | 
introduce genuine “projects,” as the common prod- | 
uct of many departments in platoon schools. The | 
revolt against “subject matter” as such, may | 
finally break up much of the present undesirable | 
subdividing of the curriculum, As for the nig- | 
gardliness of a public that compels the platooniz- | 
ing of a school, takes pride in school plants of | 
enormous size, and tolerates class units of forty | 
and forty-five children, that even too may change, | 
One reason why, no doubt, that we as taxpayers | 
are so loath to pay taxes large enough to eliminate | 
such evils, is because our own memories of school | 
are so dreary and our distrust of schooling so | 
profound. Graduates of schools where as chil- | 
dren they were happy, where they had the op- | 
portunity to develop naturally and fully, may be | 
expected to have quite another attitude towards | 
education. They may come to class education | 
among the first essentials of life and pay for it | 
accordingly. | 


IX 
| THREE DEMONSTRATION SCHOOLS 


EDUCATIONAL reformers are of three kinds: 
hose who accept the established body of knowl- 
»dge as necessary for the child to learn, but who 
admit that the methods of presenting it are at 
fault and must be changed; those who advocate 
thanges in the curriculum so as to prepare chil- 
lren more adequately for a modern world; and 
hose who view education as an organic process 
which changes and develops as the child himself 
thanges and grows. None of these three groups 
works entirely independently. The difference in 
mmphasis, however, profoundly affects what each 
s doing, and the future education will be largely 
shaped by the degree to which one group or the 
ther succeeds in dominating educational thought 
ind policy. 

_ Just now the technicians. are very much in 
rogue ; the measurement of intelligence, of class- 
‘oom achievement, and improvement in method 
xecupying the major efforts of schools of educa- 
ion and professional schoolmen everywhere. The 


125 


126 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


second group is also much in evidence, demand- 
ing modern schools to fit children to play a worthy 
part in a modern world. The third group is only 
beginning to attract attention outside of advanced 
circles, and is still dismissed by the majority of 
educators as visionary. 

There are in New York City three schools 
which, although private, are known as pace set- 
ters for the country in the first two types of re- 
form. All three also have experimented in their 
lower grades with the principles held by the third 
group. The institutions are the Horace Mann and 
Lincoln schools, both officially connected with 
Teachers College, and the Ethical Culture School. 
Both the Horace Mann and Ethical Culture 
schools are frankly conservative as regards cur- 
riculum, save for the work of Miss Patty Hill 
in the kindergarten and first grade of Horace 
Mann and the primary grades in the Ethical Cul- 
ture School. The Lincoln School, on the other 
hand, is frankly experimenting with the curric- 
ulum, seeking to adapt it to the changed de- 
mands of modern society. 

The Ethical Culture School, established in 
1878, is the oldest of the three. It was founded 
by Dr. Felix Adler as a free kindergarten for 
the children of working people, but it grew rap-| 
idly into a full graded school to which children’ 


| 


THREE DEMONSTRATION SCHOOLS 127 


were admitted from all social strata. Children 
are not excluded because of race, religion, or 
solor—a rare policy in a private school—and 
scholarships, affording either full or partial tui- 
tion extended to over two-fifths of the enrollment, 
cut down economic barriers. In admitting chil- 
dren, however, preference is usually given to 
those with a high record of scholarship and a 
ugh intelligence rating—at least II15—and once 
idmitted, pupils are expected to meet the exacting 
‘equirements of the school’s course of study. The 
‘esult of this policy is that the school serves pri- 
marily a rather narrowly specialized intellectual 
ype, and necessarily excludes many children 
vhose special talents lie outside the range of 
neasurability of the scales, or who lack ability 
0 perform difficult academic work. 

_ Some of these pupils are permitted to remain 
nd take a modified course leading to a certificate 
astead of a diploma, but they are regarded rather 
S$ lost souls by the administration. In discussing 
aem recently Superintendent Lewis said: 


_ For them the thought of the world bearing on 
uman progress so far as it is bound up in ethics, 
terature, history, science, and foreign languages 
| very largely a sealed book. Facts they can 
ften grasp and reproduce, but the relations of 
acts and reasoning generally in the abstract data 


| 





128 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


of language are often beyond their capacity. 
Hence they do not seem to me to be those best 
qualified by nature to attain the school’s highest 
aims. . . . They are not those whose intelligence 
can be raised to a point where they can cope suc 
cessfully with the burning problems now facin 
mankind, 



























The avowed purpose of the school is to train 
ethical leaders, ‘‘reformers’’ of society, and its 
officers are proud of the fact that a larger pro- 
portion of its graduates than of any other schoo. 
are engaged in teaching, research, or some typé 
of social service. The ideal of service to society 
is held constantly before the pupils by means 0: 
formal ethics instruction as well as by numerous 
activities on behalf of the community. 

A prevocational arts course has been estab 
lished in the last two years of high school fo: 
those children who show special artistic ability 
It is the ultimate hope of the school to offe: 
similar courses to those specially endowed it 
music, in home-making, mechanical ingenuity, anc 
science. Even here, however, the emphasis i 
placed upon academic standing and intellectual ca 
pacity, for Superintendent Lewis does not believ 
the course will be successful with students wh 
do not possess at least average general intelli 
gence in addition to special talent, nor would h 


THREE DEMONSTRATION SCHOOLS I29 


sive preference to the dull but talented student 
ver the bright and equally talented one. 

| While all the children of the middle and upper 
ichool are thus held to the requirements of a con- 
ventional curriculum, the attempt is made through 
ysychological study of each child to provide a 
ounded range of activities, mental, physical, and 
ocial. This is important, for precociously intel- 
ectual children are frequently emotionally infan- 
ile, or unable to respond normally to social sit- 
lations. 

Some years ago an experiment was made in the 
irimary grades of the Ethical Culture School by 
Miss Mabel Goodlander to test out some of the 
aore progressive theories of education.1 No 
hanges were made in size of class or in room 
pace, but complete freedom was given in the se- 
ction of materials, use of class time, and em- 
loyment of special teachers. Miss Goodland- 
t’s aim was “to create a free social environment 
there children in cooperation with others of the 
ame age might make a beginning in democratic 
ving under conditions more like life outside 
thool than Sony considered appropriate for 
le school régime.”’ Children as well as teacher 


1 See “Education Through Experience.” By Mabel R. 
‘oodlander. Bulletin No. 10, New York Bureau of Educa- 
onal Experiments. 


| 





130 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


were at liberty to sit where convenient, talk and 
move about freely so long as they did not annoy 
others, and to work or play either as individuals 
or in groups. Although the teacher directed the 
class when necessary, the children were mainly 
engaged in projects of their own. 

It is one of Miss Goodlander’s cardinal beliefs 
that the teacher must never dominate the situa- 
tion. “We must learn,” she says, “to appreciate 
more sympathetically each child’s point of view, 
and we should be willing to accept his judgment 
in many things frankly and sincerely even when 
it differs from our own.” 

As regards curriculum the emphasis was shifted 
from formal studies to constructive work and 
play, to expression in varying art forms, and to 
first-hand knowledge of social and industrial ac- 
tivities related to the child’s life. The three R’s 
were mastered, but Miss Goodlander waited until 
the interest of the children in them had been 
naturally aroused. 

Miss Goodlander carried her experiment for- 
ward with the same group for four years, and 
then started with a new class. According to 
Superintendent Lewis the experiment was a suc-+ 
cess, tests showing that as compared with two 
parallel divisions Miss Goodlander’s group met 
the school’s requirement in formal work and ex- 


THREE DEMONSTRATION SCHOOLS I3I 


illed in ability to observe, initiate, and carry 
rojects through; in codperation it was superior 
) one group and inferior to another. 

_In the fall of 1924 a branch of the Ethical Cul- 
ire School was opened in the West Seventies un- 
ar the direction of Miss Goodlander, who can 
ow more thoroughly test out and develop her 
ulier experiment. The classes are housed in a 
rge old fashioned dwelling which admits of a 
mse of intimacy and naturalness so important 
or young children especially. The grades are 
nited to the first four, and the kindergarten and 
le class registers are kept down to fifteen. The 
foups are therefore small enough for the de- 
‘lopment of individual ability, but large enough 
| encourage social and cooperative activities. 
he program is extremely flexible, the children 
‘e allowed much freedom in choosing and direct- 
g their own work, in shop, play and the arts, no 
$s than in the more formal subjects. The classes 
ay all day, and have plenty of time outdoors both 
the park nearby, and visiting places of interest 
the city. Even all day Saturday trips to the 
wuntry are planned. The children are fitted to 
ke their places in the succeeding grades of the 
irent school, which it is to be hoped will grad- 
ily become more freed from traditional prac- 
ses and outlook. 


132 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


In the Horace Mann School, also, due to Mis: 
Patty Hill and her associates, the work of th 
kindergarten and primary grades is less forma 
and more flexible than that of succeeding years 
Miss Hill’s work has profoundly affected th 
course of kindergarten and primary educatiotr 
throughout the country in the direction of a free! 
and more democratic type of organization. 

Recently she has been attempting to apply thi 
principles of behaviorist psychology to curriculun 
making and has worked out with her associates ; 
series of activities designed to develop prope: 
habits, physical, mental, emotional, and social! 
With the help of several hundred leaders in kin 
dergarten and primary education a “habit inven 
tory” was first produced listing specific habits 
which the majority agreed young children shoul¢ 
form. As this inventory was used, Miss Hill dis. 
covered that the supervisors and classroom teach: 

s “began to think of all instruction in terms 
of desirable change in thought, feeling, and con 
duct.” The principles of habit formation wer¢ 
thus gradually applied to all school subjects. “The 
proper conduct of the three R’s became as evider’ 


2A Conduct Curriculum for the Kindergarten and Firs 
Grade.” By Agnes Burke, Edith U. Conard, Alice Dal 
gliesh, Edna V. Hughes, Mary E. Rankin, Alice G. Thora 
Charlotte G. Garrison, Teachers of Horace Mann School 
Introduction by Patty Smith Hill. Charles Scribner’s Sons 
1924. 





THREE DEMONSTRATION SCHOOLS 133 


is the so-called moral and social conduct.” This 
esulted in regarding each aspect of the curricu- 
um, not as a formal school subject, but as a so- 
fal situation rich in activities and experiences. 
Thus acquired, the habit takes on meaning and is 
‘ssociated in the mind of the child with a sense 
satisfaction or pleasure. 

_ The basis for what Miss Hill calls her conduct 
urriculum is indubitably sound, and most of the 
Ctivities listed in her book are wholesome and 
roperly selected. There is always the danger, 
owever, as Miss Hill herself recognizes, that the 
ery explicit aims set down by her group will be 
sed not as means of wider freedom but of more 
pression. Unhappily the moralists and discipli- 
arians manage to function, no matter what in- 
‘rument is put into their hands. Their natural 
sndencies are not likely to be checked by the fol- 
ywing list of “desirable” changes in thought, feel- 
ig, and conduct which should be developed: 
Learning to enter room politely,’ ‘Greeting 
‘achers and children courteously,” “Gaining an 
‘titude of respect and obedience toward parents 
ad other adults,” “Learning to use time wisely, 
2., balance between quiet and active work’’ (what 
yung child consciously strikes such a balance?). 
1 “coming to group for discussion and music,” 
‘e desirable change stressed is “learning to se- 





134 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


lect right-sized chair and to carry chair properly.” 

These imposed standards of conduct explain 
much of what one observes upon visiting the pri- 
mary classes of the Horace Mann School. Wash- 
ing the hands before the mid-day luncheon became 
in one room an event of awful import, where si- 
lence was enjoined and order kept absolute. 
Later, the rest period, where the children were 
expected to relax, became a quarter hour of ex- 
asperated nagging by the teacher to enforce im- 
mobility upon thirty wriggling youngsters. 

The upper grades of the school make no pre- 
tense of free activity. The standards upheld are 
those which have the weight and sanctity of tra- 
dition behind them, but individual teachers are al- 
lowed a high degree of personal initiative, and a 
variety of experiments have been carried on, espe- 
cially in method, which are of distinct value. 
Scientific pedagogy has an important place im 
education, and schools everywhere are indebted to 
the researches made by Teachers College and ap- 
plied in the Horace Mann School. It would be 
stimulating to those interested in adapting educa- 
tion to the needs of growth if the teachings of 
Dewey and Kilpatrick were applied more gen- 
erally to the curriculum itself. 

The aim of the Lincoln School, as described by 
its director, Dr. Otis W. Caldwell, is “to construct 


THREE DEMONSTRATION SCHOOLS 135 


| fundamental curriculum which will be repre- 
entative of the important activities, interests, and 
vossibilities of modern life.” In remaking a cur- 
iculum, reliance must be placed not upon the 
udgment of textbook writers and individual 
eachers, but rather upon objective studies of hu- 
aan needs. The school has been in existence only 
ight years, but has already effected a number of 
horoughgoing changes in the course of study. 
“hese results have been made available to teach- 
ts throughout the country. | 
Chief among them is the revision of subject 
1atter in the social studies, in junior high school 
1athematics and in science for the upper ele- 
tentary grades. In all these subjects, new texts 
ave been prepared which are a vast improvement 
ver anything hitherto existing in these fields. 
)f special interest is the work of Dr. Harold 
‘ugg, who has abolished the artificial divisions 
xisting between history, geography, civics, eco- 
omics, and sociology, and grouped the material 
nder one natural heading—social studies—de- 
gned to help the student to understand and deal 
itelligently with the problems of contemporary 
fe. 

Dr. Rugg’s approach to his job is that of the 
tientist. His twelve social science pamphlets, 
hich embody for the junior high school the ma- 


136 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


terial as worked out to date, have been assembled 
after years of painstaking analysis, inventory 
making, trial use, and revision. The Lincoln 
School has obtained the codperation of over one 
hundred schools scattered throughout the country 
which make use of the new curricular material and 
test out its results as compared with those of 
classes following the ordinary courses. Besides 
breaking down unnatural subdivisions between al- 
lied fields of knowledge, Dr. Rugg has substi- 
tuted human episodes for the encyclopedic re- 
hearsal of bare facts. The course is thus not 
only enormously enriched and vitalized, but chil- 
dren are stimulated to weigh and discuss the 
value of one episode as compared with another, to 
draw their own conclusions, and test the validity 
of data. Dr. Rugg holds that it is only through 
such practice that the future citizen will resort 
to intelligence instead of prejudice as a guide to 
conduct. | 

Besides the junior high school pamphlets, Dr. 
Rugg’s department has made a number of other 
studies. One deals with the crucial problems and 
conditions of contemporary life, as a basis for 
determining what people ought to know about the 
industrial, political and cultural world and what 
tendencies to action the school should set up. 
Another study has been made of “frontier thin 


| 





THREE DEMONSTRATION SCHOOLS 137 


5 


ers,” those whose insight and judgments most 
profoundly interpret contemporary life and con- 
duct. An investigation is also under way to de- 
termine what historical movements, epochs, 
events, conditions and persons are of greatest im- 
portance for adequate understanding of present 
day conditions and problems. 

Curricular reform of this kind, Dr. Rugg holds, 
is basic to social progress. With Wells he be- 
lieves that the current order is witnessing “‘a race 
between education and catastrophe.” * Unless the 
schools can produce a generation of informed, 
thinking, socially disposed citizens, catastrophe 
is likely to overtake us. A dynamic curriculum in 
our schools is imperative. What such a curricu- 
lum would be like has been described for us by 
Dr. Rugg in a recent monograph. It would be, 
he says, “a curriculum which deals in a rich vivid 
manner with the modes of living of people all over 
the earth; which is full of throbbing anecdotes 
of human life. A curriculum which will set forth 
the crucial facts about the local community in 
which the pupils live; one which will interpret for 
them the chief features of the basic resources and 
industries upon which their lives depend in a 


8 “Objective Studies in Map Location,” by Harold Rugg 
and John Hockett, published by The Lincoln School of 
Teachers College, 1925. 


138 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


fragile, interdependent world; one which will in- 
troduce them to modes of living of other peoples, 
—the English, the French, the German for ex- 
ample, as typical of the industrialism of the west- 
ern world, the Russians, Chinese, and the peoples 
of South America—types of those who live under 
an agricultural economy, but whose modes of 
living in succeeding generations will become more 
and more like those of the industrial world. A 
curriculum which will enable pupils to visualize 
the problems set up by human migration, one 
which will provide them with an opportunity to 
study and think critically about the form of demo- 
cratic government under which they are living and 
to compare it with the forms of government of 
other peoples. A curriculum which will not only 
inform, but will constantly have as its ideal the 
development of an attitude of sympathetic toler- | 
ance and of critical open-mindedness. A curricu- | 
lum which is built around a core of pupils’ activi- | 
ties—studies of their home community, special 
reading and original investigation, a constantly 
growing stream of opportunities for participation 
in open-forum discussion, debate, and exchange 
of ideas. A curriculum consisting of a carefully 
graded organization of problems and exercises, 
one which recognizes the need for providing defi- 
nite and systematic practice upon socially valuable — 





THREE DEMONSTRATION SCHOOLS 139 


skills. A curriculum which deals courageously 
_and intelligently with the issues of modern life 
and which utilizes in their study the cultural and 
industrial as well as the political history of their 
development. A curriculum which is constructed 
on a problem-solving organization, providing con- 
tinuous practice in choosing between alternatives, 
in making decisions, in drawing generalizations. 
Finally a curriculum which so makes use of dy- 
‘namic episodical materials illustrating great fun- 
damental humanitarian themes that by constant 
contact with it children will grow in wise insights 
and attitudes and, constructively but critically, 
will be influenced to put their ideas sanely into 
action. 
“Such a proposed curriculum will sound vision- 
ary to many workers in our schools. Neverthe- 
less, ten years of close contact with curriculum- 
construction convince one that the characteristics 
‘described can be produced. Their attainment will 
‘require the deepest vision and the clearest think- 
ing our American educational scheme can bring 
forth. Hard intellectual work will be demanded 
of many persons. Most important of all, at the 
present juncture, will be the necessity of a more 
truly experimental attitude than is now common 
among those who control curriculum making.” 
More than a score of other curricular investi- 


I40 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


gations are in progress in the Lincoln School. 
Notable work has already been done in revising 
content and method in teaching reading, spelling, 
English composition, high school literature, his- 
tory, modern languages, industrial arts, music,— 


in fact in practically every subject in every grade, | 


some degree of experimentation is going on. 


Four guiding principles have been defined by | 


Dr. Caldwell as fundamental to the reorganiza- 
tion of any school subject: Subject matter and 
method must be engaging and genuine; pupils 
must succeed if they are to become educated ; sense 
training is necessary (at present education is 
based too much on words and too little on touch, 
sight, and taste); children should be encouraged 
to work together and teach one another. 

These principles find expression in a variety of 
ways in the school. The curriculum of the ele- 
mentary school has not been subjected to the same 


analysis and study as that of the upper grades, || 


but the class teachers are afforded much freedom 
for experimentation. The primary rooms usually 


present a pleasant hubbub of activity. They are | 


large, sunny, and equipped with all manner of | 
materials—a work bench, lumber and tools, a candi | 


board for stage scenery, with a white rabbit or 


two rambling about at will. A play is frequently | 





; 
¢. 4 


pile, large blocks, clay, paints, and large card- | 


THREE DEMONSTRATION SCHOOLS I4I 


in preparation and the children are busy com- 
posing it, painting the scenery, constructing build- 


ings and furniture, and issuing invitations to par- 
ents and friends. One first grade recently drama- 
tized the marketing of milk, while the second 
grade gave a play about New York, with sky- 


scrapers, bridges, and elevated tracks complete. 
This play grew out of many months of work with 
a city made out of boxes, which was one of the 


important centers of interest of the grade, and 
around which much valuable subject matter was 
built. The work continued all through the year, 
and supplied opportunities and meaning for much 
of the arithmetic, English and reading. For ex- 


ample, rulers were used to find the lengths, widths, 


centers and heights of things. A great deal of 


work in proportions was necessary to judge the 
proper size of trains, furniture, cars, and trolleys 
to be right for the dolls who used them. Ques- 
tions like the following constantly arose: “How 
much cloth is needed for the grocery store awn- 
ing?’ “How can we space the posts evenly for 
the railway fence; how get the posts all the same 
size?’ Scientific problems also were discussed, 
“What are the reasons and methods for preserv- 


ing foods in cities?’ “How does it happen we 


have so much pure water?’ “How are streets 
kept clean?” Excursions were taken to many 


I42 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


parts of the city to gain needed information, to 
the post office, to wholesale markets, to railroad 
stations, and warehouses.* 

Field work is an essential part of the activities 
of each grade. Last year over a hundred excur- 
sions were taken to museums, parks, factories, 
bridges, bakeries, markets, railway terminals, 
municipal and office buildings, pasteurization 
plants, hospitals, newspaper plants, various ex- 
hibits, etc., etc. In the earliest grades, the chil- 
dren frequently record their impressions of their 
trips in story or diary form. These records are 
mimeographed and bound in loose-leaf booklets, 
and later used as class reading material. Other 
activities following a trip may be: painting pic- 
tures, designs on paper or in wood or clay, map 
making, cooking, sewing, library reference work, 
collections of pictures, block play, exhibit for 
other pupils. The second grade children visited 
a vegetable farm on Long Island to discover the 
source of city supplies. The fourth grade went 
to a saw mill to supplement their study of lum- 
ber. Some of the older girls visited a mother 
and baby in their apartment to study the science 
of baby care at first hand. A seventh grade made 


#“Making a Play City,” by Katherine L. Keelor, “Pro- 
gressive Education,” June, July, August, 1924. . 





THREE DEMONSTRATION SCHOOLS 143 


‘Surveys of housing and street conditions in va- 
rious sections of the city. 

Another valuable means for supplementing and 

making real class activities, and of presenting ma- 
terial in vivid form is supplied through the school 
assemblies, at which a variety of programs is 
given by the children relating to their own spe- 
‘cial interests. So popular have the assemblies be- 
come that a weekly period has been set aside for 
them. Four general types have been developed: 
‘Class studies assemblies, codperative assemblies by 
several grades, current interest assemblies, and 
programs by outside artists and specialists. A 
ninth grade gave an assembly to tell the high 
school what they were doing in each subject, the 
high school seniors gave a poetry reading, greatly 
enjoyed by the elementary grades, the first grade 
gave a program of Christina Rossetti poems, the 
fourth grade gave a geography assembly. A num- 
ber of grades combined to give pottery and fine 
arts assemblies. 

These assembly periods are very different from 
the kind usually conducted in the ordinary schools, 
where the children recite set pieces, or render 
songs or instrumental music, made wooden and 
ifeless by drill, Every program in the Lincoln 
School assembly bears vital relation to what the 


144 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


children themselves are doing. The children are! 
so intimately concerned, that describing it to 
others becomes a comparatively easy matter and 
pupils of tender years soon learn to stand with- 
out self-consciousness before a large audience and 
present material accurately, naturally and inter- 
estingly. | 

Less valuable—so it seems to a visitor—are 
the student councils, which were organized to! 
afford machinery for a limited amount of student! 
self government. Meetings are held weekly and! 
conducted according to the laws of parliamentary) 
procedure. While the older children undoubtedly 
enjoy and benefit from them, the councils decided-| 
ly bear the impress of an adult conceived and 
adult imposed activity. During the past year the| 
practice was fortunately abandoned of requiring 
minutes and attendance of delegates from the’ 
first three grades, | 

It is to be expected that as the Lincoln School! 
experiment develops, other reasonable modifica- | 
tions will be made in accordance with the require-) 
ments of child interest and growth. Up to the!) 
present, the main emphasis of the school has beeni| 
upon scientific curriculum making, to evolve a) 
curriculum more closely related to the needs of! 
modern society. While certain of the elementary | 
grades are experimenting with free activity, there| 





THREE DEMONSTRATION SCHOOLS 145 


re many teachers on the staff who insist that 
here must be a known goal and systematic di- 
‘ection of the child’s growth towards that goal. 
fo quote Dr. Rugg once more: “. . . if growth 
s to be properly directed, the curriculum maker 
‘must be oriented so as to have his eyes set con- 
tantly on the society into which the child is grow- 
ng.” 

In accordance with this ideal, no pains and no 
expense have been spared to provide the children 
vith the proper setting. The building of the 
Lincoln School is in itself a kind of testimonial 
‘o that great and orderly society in which its 
pupils may be expected to play a leading role. 
The halls are of marble, and of noble proportions. 
‘n them under glass, are many exhibits of the 
shildren’s work. The science laboratories are 
‘quipped with the latest and most modern appara- 
us. There are splendid swimming pools, gymna- 
sia, yard and roof playgrounds. Intimacy, which 
some people feel is a first requisite for child de- 
velopment, is of course gone, save as it can be 
tetained by certain more gifted teachers in their 
alassrooms. The school has an institutional 
flavor in common with the Ethical Culture and 
Horace Mann Schools, and in common also with 
the public schools throughout the country, which 
it was organized to serve. Yet much that goes 


146 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


on within the walls of the Lincoln institution is 
liberating. It is of vital importance to cut away 
the dead wood of a course of study and start out 
with fresh modern material. But curricular re- 
form, after all, is only a fractional part of edu- 
cational progress. The human spirit is not fed 
by mental pabulum alone, even the best that can 
be devised. It has a way of eluding even the 
worst. The great experiment of the Lincoln) 
School remains yet to be made, that of studying’ 
and watching the growth and development of chil- 
dren under conditions of real—not institutional 
—freedom. 





ooo ha 


Xx 
FOLLOWING THE CHILD’S LEAD 


I 


AT its annual meeting in 1924 an ambitious 
droposal was made by the Teachers Union of 
New York. Following an intensive study of the 
‘eading private experimental schools in and near 
he city, the union has prepared and submitted to 
he city board of education a scheme for estab- 
ishing a similar experimental center in the pub- 
ic-school system. The proposal deserves particu- 
ar consideration because it comes not from out- 
iders but from a group of workers who have la- 
sored long to apply the ordinary methods of in- 
truction. These methods, according to the union, 
lave brought public-school education to a condi- 
jon of stagnation. Children are turned into 
utomatons by the artificial discipline of drill as 
n end in itself; they are robbed of their child- 
ood by having to conform to adult standards of 
Aought and behavior; their individual and crea- 
ve tendencies are smothered by the rigid curricu- 
im to which all must submit; they soon develop 

147 





148 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


antagonistic attitudes toward their work, towar< 
their teacher, their associates, and life in gen 
eral. 

In the school which the union seeks to have 
established ‘the boys and girls will reconstruc 
their experiences in a boys’ or girls’ world. . . 
The environment will be such as to liberate anc 
organize their capacities through self-initiated 
self-directed, whole-hearted, purposeful activities 
In this way they will be able to experience thi 
sheer joy of living. The curriculum will be a: 
varied, rich, and fluid as life itself.” The unior 
observes that in experimental schools conducted or 
this basis children learn the “fundamentals’’—the 
three R’s—better than under the traditiona 
methods. This has been determined by the use 
of objective standardized tests. The many othe 
gains made by the children become apparent i 
one makes the slightest examination of what 
these newer schools have to offer. 

The experimental centers which served as mod: 
els for the union’s program included the City ané 
Country School and the Walden School in New 
York City. The City and Country School was 
founded (as the Play School) by Caroline Pratt it 
1914. The Walden School was started by Mar- 
garet Naumburg in 1916 and is now directed by 
Margaret Pollitzer and Elizabeth Goldsmith. Te 


{I ¥ 
KG 


dah 


FOLLOWING THE CHILD’S LEAD 149 


the extent that they serve to revitalize and raise 
the standard of public-school procedure, these 
schools have a significance far beyond the educa- 
tion of the limited number of children who at- 
tend them. 

In both schools, questions relating to curricu- 
lum are of secondary consideration and emphasis 
is laid upon the child’s present needs and his in- 
nate capacities and interests. The outstanding 
purpose is to help the children to evolve a world 
of their own in which they will think, act, and ex- 
press themselves on their own level. Book learn- 
ing as an end is discouraged, especially in the 
early years, for it represents at best vicarious 
experiences. Instead, children are given every 
Dpportunity to obtain first-hand contact with the 
world about them and are given ample and va- 
fied materials with which to express their own 
fresh reactions to these contacts. This involves, 
xf course, the abandonment of fixed recitation 
eriods, of assigned lessons, of immovable desks 
ind immovable children. Freedom from con- 
itraint, however, does not mean that the pupils 
‘run wild.” Indeed, they hold to their self- 
thosen tasks with a concentration and absorption 
‘arely found in the ordinary schoolroom, where 
he slightest interruption—the flapping of a blind 
w the creaking of a door—is sufficient to shift 


I50 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


the whole base of the attention of the class. To 
those inured to the stereotyped and poverty- 
stricken responses of children brought up in the 
conventional environment, the creative achieve- 
ment of the pupils of these newer schools seems 
almost incredible. This is most dramatically evi- 
dent in the field of the plastic arts, where the 
work in drawing, painting, and pottery achieves 
a standard of high professional merit. Striking 
work is done in music, in rhythm, and in imagina- 
tive writing. 

Characteristic of these schools are the length. 
ening of the school day and the extension of the 
school’s influence to the earliest years of child- 
hood. With the growing recognition on the part 
of psychologists, physicians, and child-welfare 
workers generally of the supreme importance of 
infancy and earliest childhood, nursery schools 
have been established in many centers which are 
concerned with studying early growth and habit 
formation and making certain that they proceed | 
along wholesome lines. The Walden school. ad- 





cational Experiments “oraduates” its youngsters _ 
into Miss Pratt’s school when they reach the age) 
of three. Both schools also maintain a careful 
and scientific system of record-keeping, covering - 





FOLLOWING THE CHILD’S LEAD I5I 


every possible detail of procedure and of individ- 
ual and social development. Since the schools 
‘are experimental these records are invaluable as 
‘means of checking achievement, as well as for the 
light they shed on hitherto unexplored fields of 
child growth. 
_ While the two schools have thus much in com- 
mon, their method of approach is very different. 
In so far as classification is possible for either, 
it may be said that the City and Country School 
hhas been influenced by the teaching of behaviorist 
psychology and the Walden School by that of 
analytic psychology. Now the psychologist who 
is concerned chiefly with the science of human be- 
havior declares that the individual can be trained 
to withstand most of the shocks and disasters of 
life by being properly “conditioned” in early 
childhood—by having the right instead of the 
wrong sensory stimuli presented to him and ac- 
quiring early the proper habits of response. The 
analytic psychologist is also concerned with child- 
hood, btit chiefly because of the mechanism of the 
unconscious to which he believes are relegated 
the unpleasant incidents of life, especially those 
of early youth. 

Now, it will not do to draw any fine psychologi- 
al distinctions between the City and Country and 
Walden schools, but in general terms it might be 


152 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


said that the former is interested in what chil- 
dren do, how they act, and what use they make of 
their environment, whereas the latter school is 





mostly concerned with underlying motive and_ 


emotional make-up. This does not mean that one 
school hopes to develop objective and the other 
subjective types of people, nor that in one school 
children will grow up mainly interested in mate- 
rials and in the other mainly interested in intro- 
spective and personal relationships, but the dif- 
ferences between the two schools have this gen- 
eral trend. | 
Miss Pratt’s behaviorist “slant” is well shown 
in these sentences from her book on the City and 
Country School, published by E. P. Dutton: 


We are not willing to be dominated or have the 
children dominated by subject matter. We wish 
them to form strong habits of first-hand research 
and to use what they find; we want them to dis- 


cover relationships in concrete matter so that they | 


will know that they exist when they deal with 
abstract forms. We want them to have a fine 


motor experience because they themselves are mo- 
tor and to get and retain what they get through | 


bodily perceptions. 


Miss Pratt has developed her curriculum very 
much more completely than has the Walden 
School. As the result of ten years’ testing of her 


| 


— i = aL SO a Se ery pee ae 
— eee. ALLL DAL DLL LAELIA A 


| 





FOLLOWING THE CHILD’S LEAD 153 


theories she is now prepared to assert that certain 


; 


activities are better performed at certain age levels 
‘than at others. For example, seven-year-old chil- 
“dren in her school always have for their main 
enterprise for the year the building of a minia- 
ture city in permanent form, just as at six they 
“Teproduce the city in block form. At seven, the 
children construct wooden houses, which they 


paint, furnish, and wire, they lay out streets, trol- 
ley lines, and waterways with a full quota of boats, 
At eight, the children run the supply store for the 
school, taking complete charge of all orders and 
accounting for the money. While not an advo- 
cate of formal programs, Miss Pratt believes that 


the programs of successive years should bear defi- 


nite relationship to one another and that one year’s 


‘activities should grow naturally from those of 


the years preceding. At seven, she also has the 
children begin their work in reading, writing, and 


arithmetic. Before that age is reached they have 


acquired some number sense and a limited ability 
to recognize written symbols. But at seven, she 


‘has discovered, they become more concerned with 
Tealities, their drive becomes more conscious, they 


emerge from the merely play world, and desire to © 
be taught. To those who have made a fetish of 
Sugar-coating the three R’s, the story of one 


youngster is instructive. She reported enthusi- 


154 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


astically to her mother one day that spelling was 
her favorite subject. When her mother inquired 
whether that was because of some new way of 
teaching it the child replied: “Oh, no, Miss —— | 
just says do it, and we do it!” 
When standard achievement tests are applied, 
Miss Pratt’s children always show up extremely 
well in the formal subjects. In the record of the 
eight-year-old group appended to this chapter are 
the scores attained in reading and arithmetic. 
Only two of the class fell below the level for 
their age; four read as well as ten-year-old chil- 
dren;-two as well as eleven years old, and one as 
well as thirteen years. The arithmetic scores were 
not quite as superior because the business of store 
keeping had caused the children to mark off two 
decimal places, where none belonged. Every child 
however was up to grade, and seven ranged from 
one to three grades ahead. A recent comparison 
of problems solved by Miss Pratt’s children and 
those of a very efficient demonstration school, 
showed that Miss Pratt’s children excelled in 
originality in ways of problem solving, but fell 
somewhat below in speed and accuracy. During 
the winter of 1924-25 a special arithmetic teacher 
was appointed to be on the lookout for opportuni-| 
ties for teaching necessary arithmetic to help chil- 
dren do better the activities they have initiated. 


a 











FOLLOWING THE CHILD’S LEAD 155 


One boy for instance, failed after many weeks 
of work to make the motor in his toy motor boat 
function (both motor and boat were constructed 

by him in the school shop). His failure was due 
to faulty arithmetic in making calculations. 

Miss Pratt’s attitude towards the results of the 
tests is illuminating: “They prove the teacher’s 
ability to train these youngsters in the specific 
things they will have to know in carrying out a 
future program. They have little to do with the 
education of the children....A person is 
trained by another, but he educates himself. If 
we could once get that idea into the consciousness 
of our parenthood and our teacherhood, the revo- 
lution in our school procedure would be imme- 
diate.” + 

Opportunities for this self-education are every- 
where present. “Information” which the tradi- 
‘tional school holds so dear, is acquired naturally 

as the children carry on their enterprises. Miss 
Stott’s record amply proves this. The coveted 
post of cashier or messenger in the group store 
could not be held by children unable to perform 
‘the necessary operations in arithmetic. Geog- 
raphy may be said to start with the three and four 
-year olds. The little ones learn to go about the 


1 “Experimental Practice in the City and Country School,” 
by Caroline Pratt, E. P. Dutton, 1924. 


156 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


school and to locate their room with reference to 
the rest of the building. Later they venture out 
into the streets and locate the school. Excursions 
to parks, markets, docks, bridges, public build- 
ings broaden their knowledge of their immediate 
world and furnish material for reconstruction in 
block, clay, story, or pictorial form. ‘Their in- 
quiries about everything with which they come 
into contact leads to their acquiring an immense 
amount of information not found in textbooks. 
Miss Pratt is far less interested in having the 
children learn the States of the Union and their 
capitals than to have them discover the interrela- 
tion of different parts of trade and industry and 


our dependence upon them. “In building a body 


of what the schools call ‘general information’ un- 


related to the child’s experience, they build of 


straw.” The six-year-old group who paid re- 
peated visits to a Cuban steamer each time it 


docked accumulated a vivid store of matérial about 


Cuba which formal instruction would never have 
provided. 

There are, of course, certain matters in Miss 
Pratt’s school about which perhaps more dis- 
cussion is needed. It is possible that under less 
wise leadership Miss Pratt’s insistence upon pro- 





gram-making might result in too great formalism. — 


One might also question whether the very com- 


pace Se 


FOLLOWING THE CHILD'S LEAD 157 


plete classification of children by chronological 
age and the formulating of activities according to 
varying age levels is not injecting something at 
once spurious and artificial. The intelligence test- 
ers have made us all sensitive to the question of 
“age,” but obviously a child is an individual first 
and a given age second, and it is as an individual 
with his abilities and disabilities that he has first 
claim on our attention. Advances in analytic 
psychology may also modify Miss Pratt’s very 
emphatic contention that there is something “‘un- 
fortunate” about a child who does not “attack” 
materials, but instead has his interest ‘‘riveted”’ 
in people. 

Miss Pratt has also been occasionally criticized 
for limiting the development of imagination by 
keeping the children too much in the present and 
giving them too much concrete material. Her an- 
swer is that the first-hand experiences of children 
contain the factual elements necessary to art. 
“Vivid auditory and perceptive images come from 
vivid experiences.” Children who can observe 
deeply, whose interests are kept alive, and who 
remain sensitive to.new impressions cannot be 
lacking in imaginative power. As a matter of 
fact, the imaginative plays, drawings, and writings 
of the older groups in the school are of a high 
order. The twelve-year-old class has recently 


158 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


given a performance of Euripides’s “Alcestis” 
which would do credit to maturer students. Their 


back-drop and costumes, their original music. 


played on lyres made in the school-shop were de- 
lightfully executed. There is, thinks Miss Pratt, 
too much vicarious living, too much vicarious en- 
joyment in our civilization. Children if taken 
young enough and helped to develop their own 
creative purposes will establish habits of being 
motivated from within, which is the only way in 
which original and artistic work can be achieved. 


II 


The following record was written by the group 
teacher, Miss Leila V. Stott, of the activities of 
the eight-year-old children for the month of April, 
1924. It is preceded by a few paragraphs from 


the October record bearing on the beginning of — 
the store, which as has been already indicated, is — 


the central activity of the year. 


The record has value in many ways. It an- | 


swers specifically at least for the group and the 
month covered, the question, what kind of things 
go on in an experimental school? It also shows 
how fruitfully the interests of children lead to 


worth while activities not only in dramatization, | 
music, dancing, painting, pottery or music, but 


Sl RS Aa ——— 





FOLLOWING THE CHILD’S LEAD 159 





‘in the more formal fields of reading, writing, 
l “number work, geography and history, as well. 


EXCERPTS FROM THE RECORD OF 
Group VIII 


From the October, 1924, record. 
THE STORE 

| The group came to school prepared to under- 
take the business of running a stationery store, as 
‘last year’s VIII’s did, to sell supplies to other 
“school groups. They had already met with last 
year’s class, last spring, and agreed to buy the 
stock left over as well as certain store fixtures 
such as shelves and counter. There was some dis- 
‘cussion about this as some of the children wanted 
to make their own fixtures, but others thought it 
important to have the store ready to open as soon 
as possible. This view prevailed so it was de- 
cided to buy all the supplies offered. The group 
borrowed $50 from the school office as capital 
and gave a promissory note in return. Their first 
business on returning to school was the taking of 
‘an inventory to check up the supplies found in the 
store with the list left by last year’s class. The 
Various items as reported by the children were 
written for them on the board and copied by each 
child in order to have individual copies of the 





160 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


whole inventory. Several suggestions were made 
for improving the store equipment, including a 
plan for a better show case. Mr. Reber was 
called in for consultation and time in the shop 
arranged for. After discussion of all the prepa- 
rations necessary, it was decided to open the 
store on Monday, the 8th, and letters announe- 
ing the opening were written and sent to all the 
classes in the school. Several posters were also 
started, but only Vera’s was finished in time and 
posted on the store door. Two trips were taken 
to get prices and supplies found to be needed and 
the group also had a call from a salesman who 
wanted to supply our needs. We gave him sam- 
ples and asked him to submit prices. It was 
found we would need certain class supplies like 
pencils and account books preliminary to opening 
the store, so we drew from the school office, $10 


for our October allowance and opened the store 


for a private sale. This necessitated opening 
books for the store and for the class, and the first 
treasurers and bookkeepers were chosen by me 
for their facility in the necessary techniques. We 
decided to choose each week a class treasurer, sales 
bookkeeper and expense bookkeeper so that all 


might share in the experience. All the group 
practiced writing sales slips, writing columns of 


price numbers from dictation and adding. 


/ FOLLOWING THE CHILD’S LEAD 161 
| When the store opened on October 8th, the 
‘class was divided into five committees of three 
each, one committee to have charge of the store 
‘each day so that every child served once a week. 
. A student teacher helped in the store during 
‘the first two weeks. Each Friday the books are 
balanced. The class book is taken because it is 
simple and the class writes the totals from this 
dictation and adds. Results are compared and 
‘corrections made where necessary. The treas- 
urer then announces the amount received at the 
beginning of the week and each child calculates 
by counting up from total spent the amount that 
Should be in the cash box. Leonard who was first 
tlass treasurer, on finding himself two pennies 
short, decided at once to make a new cash box 
as the one left us by last year’s class had cracks. 
He produced a box admired by all for its fine 
workmanship. 

After the class accounts are settled, the store 
dooks are attacked in the same way, the book- 
keepers reading the totals for each day and the 
test adding individually. When different results 
are reported, all go over the work to discover 
which is right until unanimity is reached. The 
subtraction of the expense total from the amount 
received is done by me on the board and explained, 
out the children often calculate the difference men- 


: 
tally by counting up from expense total to total 
receipts. Counting of the actual cash at the end 


of the first week revealed the serious deficit of 
| 


$4.90. This was discussed by all and as the box 


162 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


had been carefully padlocked the possibility of 
theft was dismissed, and carelessness in making 


change or making entries in the book was held 
responsible. As one instance was known where 


$1.00 too much had been given in change and 


returned by a teacher, this seemed a probable ex- 
planation and pointed to the necessity for more 


practice in making change. 
The new show case was finished and equipped 
with an electric light by Walter with help from 


Herbert, the new paper rack was finished by | 
Walter and the girls took much pleasure in ar-_ 


ranging the stocks and putting on the price labels. 
Every one wrote an individual price list from 


a copy I put on the board and the two lists easiest — 


to read were posted in the store. Prices of goods 
bought from last year’s class were taken from 
their price list and new goods bought by us were 
marked at the usual retail price. Tables of crayon 
prices (.02) up to a dozen were posted in the 
store and also prices for large drawing paper 
(.03 a sheet), erasers (.05), pads (.06) and pen- 
cils (.07). As only the 2 table is universally 
known, these lists are important aids to sales- 


: 








FOLLOWING THE CHILD’S LEAD 163 


“men. All the classes have been asked to order 
ahead by mail in order to avoid delays in the store 
and the reading of the daily business mail is an 
important part of the morning business meeting. 
‘Tt has brought out a decided preference for print 
Over script writing. Business letters have been 
written to outside firms by Herbert and Alice and 
have brought answers and the supplies ordered. 

The election of bookkeepers has brought out 
the need for a test of capacity. Leonard ques- 
tioned Nell’s fitness on the ground that she used 
“scribbly writing.” Nell claimed to be able to 
write in print, too, and Leonard demanded evi- 
dence before voting. Both candidates were asked 
to do some specimen writing on the board and 
the class voted with the evidence before them. 

The trimming of the show case, cleaning up of 
the store each day, arrangement of stock, the 
counting of money in the cash box, have all been 
full of real play interest. 


RECORD FOR APRIL, 1924 
I. Play Experiences 


ORGANIZED GAMES 


There has been a great development of inter- 
est in baseball this month. Walter, Edna and 








164 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


Margery are the leading spirits and have prac: 
ticed alone when there were not enough player: 
for a real game, but with the encouragement fron 
me the whole class has joined in the enthusiasr 
and has divided into two sides headed respectively 
by Margery and Walter for daily practice. Jason 
in spite of interest in the game has been so di. 
verted by the attraction of play in the “rive 
yard,” that he did not give much time to bas« 
ball until, by Miss Pratt’s advice, I announcec 
that the river yard would be open to Group VII) 
only during the noon and after school session 
This new ruling brought Leonard and Harry alsc 
into the regular baseball practice and althougl 
these two did not so obviously need the disciplin« 
of organized games as Jason, it is making for < 
better group spirit to have their interest keen in 
the games. As both these boys stay for the 
after school time, they are not losing their op- 
portunity for the quieter kind of dramatic play 
with trains. Next to Margery, Alice has be- 
come most enthusiastic of all the girls over base- 
ball, but Vera and Emma play regularly, and Ver2 
and Jane are considered better players than Alice 
Grace and Bertha were also considered valuable 
assets to a team, but have been absent so muck 
that they have had little practice this month. 
Vera usually announces she is not going to play. 


FOLLOWING THE CHILD’S LEAD 165 


‘but when this is accepted without comment, 
‘changes her mind and asks for a place in the game. 
Nell and Elizabeth like to play, but dread the 
criticism of the others as neither succeeds in bat- 
ting the ball at all. Walter, as captain of one side, 
has shown real interest in coaching Elizabeth and 
does it in a very nice spirit. Ellis finds it hard 
to see himself in the unusual position of being 
excelled by Walter and Margery, but takes this 
salutary experience well with only occasional long- 
ings for soccer instead of baseball. Walter, Ja- 
son, Margery and Alice were raised into seventh 
heaven one day by being taken into a practice 
game of the XII’s. 

There has also been some basket ball practice 
in the gymnasium on rainy days, especially by 
Walter, Harry, Jane, Elsa and Margery. Nell, 
Elizabeth and Grace still cling exclusively to the 
"ings. 


PLAY WITH BIG MATERIALS 


The first time the “Covered Wagon” play was 
aken up again after vacation, the children found 
hemselves so hopelessly stale on it that they 
igreed with relief to. my suggestion to drop it. 
ater on, however, interest revived among the 
rirls, and there seemed to be a feeling of incom- 


166 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


pletion after all the work on costumes, so the 
whole group discussed the situation and agreed 
to give the play but to make certain changes in 
parts. All the boys and Alice wanted to make 
changes and the boys also suggested a new Indian 
scene in an Iroquois Long House. Jason, Harry 
and Leonard dressed up as Indians and worked 
out spontaneously a very good pantomime of de- 
parture on a deer hunt and return with a deer. 
This was, of course, suggested by the original 
Indian play they made up earlier in the year, but 
Leonard added details drawn from the story of 
Apauk which he has been re-reading alone, deal- 
ing with the Indian’s fast and dream in order to 
get “good medicine” for the hunt. 





MAP MAKING 


The introduction of some plasticine the last 
week of the month led to a wave of enthusiasm 
for making relief maps. The first maps were of 
the Hudson and Mohawk valleys with Catskill 
and Adirondack Mountains, and including Lakes 
George and Champlain and sometimes the Green 
Mountains beyond. The divides between the 
Hudson Valley and Lake Champlain and between 
the Mohawk and the Oswego Rivers were always 


FOLLOWING THE CHILD’S LEAD 167 


indicated though the latter river is not known by 
“name. 
No two maps of course are exactly alike, but 
“nearly all begin from the northern end of Man- 
hattan and show the Palisades. Fort Orange, or 
Albany, as it is called interchangeably, is also in- 
dicated on these maps and sometimes part of 
‘Lake Erie and some of the N ew York State 
Lakes. Streams flowing into the Hudson and 
Mohawk feature in all maps and all water is 
‘painted blue. Walter also made a map of Man- 
hattan and the surrounding territory including 
Staten Island, Long Island, the Sound and Upper 
Bay and marked subway routes and bridges to 
Brooklyn. Nell and Elizabeth followed suit. El- 
lis, Jason and Harry branched out into maps of 
South America featuring the Andes and the Ama- 
zon River with Para at its mouth. N early every 
one took up this idea next, rejoicing over the easy 
coast line of South America as compared with the 
irregularities of North America. Consultation 
of maps resulted in the spontaneous addition of 
the La Plata River and the Brazilian Highlands 
ind the location of Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro 
ind the cattle ranches of Brazil. The accidental 
eaving of a strip of low land west of the Andes 
n Vera’s map led to my recognition of it as Chile, 


168 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


and it now appears on all maps. Emma had heard 
of the A. B. C. republics so I explained the three 
names and showed how they belonged roughly to 
these three divisions that appear on their maps. 
Cape Horn and the Panama Canal are universally 
featured. Harry made the most beautiful map of 
» all and adorned it with such significant symbols 
as a cow on the Brazilian highland, a steamer on 
an indicated course from Buenos Aires (where it 
got meat) to Para (for rubber), and off Cape 
Horn, a mast schooner. Jason, on the other hand, 
objects to all such play symbols and wants a “real 
map.” Both he and Walter have shown a more 
sustained and concentrated interest in this than 
any other activity except store and baseball. With 
the exception of the store and dramatics, no other 
activity has been shared so completely by the 
whole group, girls and boys alike, as this map 
making. Clay has been used when the supply of 
plasticine gave out, but is unsatisfactory for per- 
manent results. 


DRAWING AND PAINTING 


Leonard was still eager to draw when he first. 
came back after the holidays, but talked so much 
he could accomplish nothing. I therefore insisted | 
on his drawing alone in the store if he wanted to 





FOLLOWING THE CHILD’S LEAD 169 


‘draw at all. He protested violently at first, but 
the results were so good that he became interested 
and soon took voluntarily to the store, asking to 
have the door closed to insure greater quiet. Later 
on however a new enthusiasm for reading rele- 
gated drawing for the first time to a very subor- 
dinate position. The forest scenery for the play 
was finished by him with the assistance of Jane, 
Margery, Jason and Harry, but the only real 
enthusiasm for drawing this month has been on 
the part of Nell, Elizabeth, Emma, Vera and 
Elise who worked all the first two weeks whenever 
they had a chance on the interiors of houses. 
Nell’s results were particularly good as in her ex- 
teriors of last month and she started the fashion 
of pasting her pictures together in long suites of 
rooms to make up a whole house plan. Mr. Zo- 
rach was much interested in these designs of hers 
when he came in one day for a special painting 
period. I had asked him to come in because I 
felt that Leonard and Ellis and Jason were rather 
at a standstill in their drawing and painting and 
perhaps needed help in technique, and all the 
children needed some stimulus toward a bolder 
and freer use of their materials. Leonard had 
already started on a large painting of a scene in 
the interior of a Log House inspired by his plan 
for the new act in the play and Mr. Zorach’s en- 


170 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


couragement gave him new inspiration. Ellis re- 
sponded, too, with a large scale painting of a 
bear followed by one of the Amazon jungle. He 
consulted pictures of palm trees for details in 
this latter picture and asked me many questions 
too about the kinds of growth and the animals to 
be found there. 

Mr. Zorach admired a color effect Emma had 
produced in a small painting and asked her to 
repeat it on a large scale which she did very 
successfully in the first large painting she has 
made this year. Alice attempted a large scale 
drawing of an Indian with his Long House in the 
background, but was dissatisfied with it and un- 
willing to finish it. Walter has done two large 
crayon drawings, one a map begun by Leonard 
and turned over to Walter at the latter’s request, 
and the second a very good ship coming head on, 
probably copied from one of Ellis’ on the wall. It 
showed, however, great improvement in technique 
and a gain in confidence as well. The week be- 
fore Easter was marked by a passion for making 
Easter cards on the part of five girls. They made 
them on order for other children as well as for 
themselves. The same kind of work on decora- 
tive designs, small scale illustrations and illumi- 
nated letters has gone into much of their making 
of books. 


FOLLOWING THE CHILD’S LEAD 171 


: POTTERY AND CLAY MODELING 
Much less time than formerly has been spent 
‘by the girls in this kind of work, but Nell has 
‘produced a very good tea pot which has been fired 
and she has finished and glazed a pitcher and su- 
gar bowl as well. Jane spent a good deal of time 
working alone one week when drops in her eyes 
‘prevented her from joining many other kinds of 
work, and she made a life size rabbit which she 
painted and took home for an Easter present. 
She also made a grotesque head which she de- 
tided to name the Hunch Back of Notre Dame. 
Ellis has done a good deal of modeling, always 
of animals. His white seal, inspired by Kipling’s 
story, and a model of a python strangling a deer 
particularly show a stirring of the imagination as 
well as remarkable technique. 


II. Practical Experience 


STORE 


| 
i 


Interest holds so universally that there is a 
strong protest from the store committee against 
aking trips in the morning and missing store 
‘ime. Twice, however, this protest has been met 
dy the agreement to let the committee that lost 
ts turn substitute for absent members of other 


172 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


committees and volunteers from Group IX have 
kept store for us so that we could have extra time 
for trips. Jason asks regularly to have special 
number work given him in free time or at home 
so. that he can act as special messenger for the 
store when needed. Leonard continues enthusias- 
tic about all bookkeeping and cashier work and 
is very accurate in adding long columns, some- 
times saving sales slips for two days to enter 


all at once in order to get a longer column to add. 


He was absent the last day before book balanc- 
ing, so I asked for a volunteer to get the books 
written up to date, and Walter responded not so 
much from interest in the job as from realization 
that it had to be done before the books could be 


balanced. Nell, who is better than most of the 


group in the technique of arithmetic (familiarity 


with combinations, tables, etc.), still becomes 
easily confused in actual store work, cannot bal- 


ance her accounts as cashier without help and has 


difficulty counting out the right amount of change, — 
though she readily calculates in her head the 


amount needed. Bertha, on the other hand, was 


so clear in her thinking that when she found the 
cash in the box 2 cents short of the amount | 
shown by her book, she at once put her finger | 
on the difficulty by admitting she had changed | 
one sales slip from 10 cents to 12 cents because | 


ee i 





FOLLOWING THE CHILD'S LEAD 173 


, She thought the wrong price had been charged. 
_ She produced the slip on which she had made a 
/note of her correction. Mistakes in spelling on 
Sales slips are usually noted by all bookkeepers 
_and the slips are given back to the person respon- 
_ sible, to be corrected. 


SHOP 


Walter and Jane finally finished the cashier’s 
cage and installed it in the store amid universal 
approval. It consists of three frames covered 
/with chicken wire and fastened together with 
hinges so that it surrounds the cashier’s table on 
three sides. It has, of course, a window in front 
‘through which money is handed in and out. 
Emma and Vera finished the frame for scenery 
and have mounted the latter. Walter and Ellis both 
made swords—for no school purpose—and Wal- 
ter continues to work on his aeroplane which is 
an ambitious undertaking. Ellis has made a 
Greek ship following a design found in a book of 
ships. The inspiration came from the story of 
the “Children’s Homer,’ which Mr. Paley is 
reading aloud at rest time. Harry and Jason 
have both worked on boats for use in the river 
vyard. Harry’s has a tin keel, a mast, and many 
fine details as is characteristic of all his work. 


174 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


The girls’ work in the shop has been chiefly on 
stilts and all of them are now provided with gayly 
painted sets. Elizabeth and Nell are at work now 
on bird houses for use in the country and are 
doing careful work with intense concentration. 
Mr. Reber reports that Ellis is lacking in inde- 
pendence in working on his Greek ship. I asked 
a student teacher to report on Walter’s work in 
shop when he went by special arrangement at 
9.30 one day, and she reported such splendid con- 
centration, in spite of fooling going on by sev-. 
eral older boys in Mr. Reber’s absence, that he 
has been allowed to go often at this time when 
Mr. Reber could be there. 


GROUP MANAGEMENT 


By accident I came in late one afternoon with- 
out previous notice and found the children gath- 
ered in a reading circle according to the pro- 
gram I had put on the board. Emma was reading 
aloud Tappan’s “Colonial Stories.” On the whole 
there has been much less restlessness and better 
concentration since the return to regular pro- 
grams. Free program making is now confined to 
Fridays after book balancing is over and is much 
enjoyed, though actual changes in the program 
are few. Walter and Jason get in extra shop 





FOLLOWING THE CHILD'S LEAD 175 


periods usually on these free days, Leonard and 
Bertha and Alice read more and all do more draw- 
ing or typewriting. 


CARE OF ROOM AND MATERIALS 


_ Jason has taken charge of the paints and 
brushes and keeps the cloths washed. Leonard 
volunteered to assist him and serve in his ab- 
sence, and I rarely have to take any responsibility 
about this now. There is also great improvement 
in leaving tables picked up before going to yard 
or lunch. Emma and Vera one day volunteered to 
scrub the floor on which some paint had been 
spilled, and enjoyed the job so much that they 
proceeded to give the store a thorough cleaning, 
too. One week when Vera was class treasurer 
she discovered that the treasury was down to 
17 cents and we had only one roll of paper 
towelling left, so by careful watching and fre- 
quent urging of economical use she made the towel 
last two weeks! 


Ill. Special Training 


DANCING 


The return to “regular dancing” after the time 
spent on dramatics has been enjoyed by all. Ja- 


176 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


son still protests at times, but is interested when 
actually at work. Elizabeth and Nell seem to 
have been released by the dramatic play to a very 
marked extent and show freedom and original 
thinking as well as good listening in fitting pat- 
terns and pantomime to music. One period was 
spent in a square dance with spontaneously 
evolved figures. All tried out figures and Miss 
Doing chose several good ones to be tried out by 
the whole group. There was great enthusiasm 
over this especially on part of the girls, but no 
one has wanted to try it again. 

The usual stretching exercises, cart wheels and 
standing on hands have occupied all the time not 
spent on dancing patterns and pantomimes. Ja-~ 
son and Ellis continue to ask regularly for the 
cowboy play, but only once has the rest of the 
group joined in the request and secured the op- 
portunity. 

All the boys are improving in cart wheels, but 
only Walter as yet can stand on his hands, and 
none of the boys approach Margery and Emma 
or any of the girls except Nell and Elizabeth in 
agility. Jane, as usual, shows keenest ability to 
fit her movements to the music as was especially 
shown in dancing alone to music which -had two 
well marked voices and was danced by most of 
the children in couples, each partner choosing one 


W 


FOLLOWING THE CHILD’S LEAD 177 
voice to follow. Jane followed one voice with 
‘ner feet and another with hand movements. All 
‘the boys have improved in:seriousness of work 


and in adjusting to the music. 


| MUSIC 

There has been a good spirit of serious work 
ind real interest in the music all the month. Ellis 
ind Leonard have become so interested in play- 
ng on the marimbas now that they have started 
0 make their own at last. The last month had 
neluded a good deal of singing of familiar songs 
or pleasure, especially quiet songs conducive to 
‘ood tone in order to counteract the over excite- 
tent evidenced by rough tone and constant inter- 
uptions, also a good deal of band work which 
avolved accurate listening and watching the di- 
ector. Besides this kind of work there had been 
| good deal of straight technique such as drill 
1 singing notes of the scale from hand signs, and 
ais month all of this seemed to bear fruit in 
etter tone, alertness and interest so a few new 
ngs were introduced and learned readily. Prac- 
‘ce in recognizing songs is a part of each lesson. 
Human marimbas,’ made by numbering the 
aildren up to five and making tunes by calling on 
ich child to sing his own number as indicated by 


178 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


the teacher, is a very entertaining game. ‘“Spell- 
ing’ tunes sung by teacher is another new game 
and is done by singing back.the same air giving 
numbers instead of syllables “la” sung by teacher. 

One lesson was skipped because the group 
begged to go out to see a match game in the yard, 
and Miss Hubbell did not want them to come to 
music under compulsion. Jane, Bertha and Emma 
were unwilling to lose the music period and stayed 
for free work with marimbas, numbers read from 
staff and the big drum. Two tunes were now 
played on marimbas and followed pretty well by 
all but Walter and Jason, who became confused in 
playing with the group. There has been special 
drill on holding the long notes in phrases. Drill 
on distinguishing between major and minor chords 
aroused interest, but proved still too difficult for 
most of the children. Walter, Herbert and Vera 
never made a mistake in this. Harry asked many 
questions, but did not actually listen accurately. 
Nell’s steady improvement throughout the year 
has been very noticeable. Last year she rarely 
entered into group singing, seldom gave indi- 
vidual responses, and her inability to listen made 
her pitch very inaccurate. Now she sings with 
well shaped mouth for words, her pitch is much 
steadier and her better attention and concentration 
together with a longer span of interest makes her 


FOLLOWING THE CHILD'S LEAD 179 


‘responses to technical questions much more in- 
telligent. 

| Jason, because of serious objection to music, 
‘was dropped from group work and allowed to 
‘spend the music period in special number work. 
He was given the weekly half hour of free time 
with Miss Hubbell instead of group work and 
‘improved so much in interest and technique that 
he returned to the group at his own request at the 
end of the month. 


NUMBER 


Drill on the multiplication tables needed in 
store work, i.e., 2, 3, 5 and 6 tables, has taken 
‘up much time and interest. Most of the children 
have also learned the 4 table, and Ellis, Jason, 
Walter and Alice went on with the 7. The 
method of learning them is to make the tables for 
themselves by addition, to test each other in 
couples and then come to me for a final test. I 
give multiplication and short division examples 
on the table learned. Leonard always does better 
in the actual examples than in abstract drill ques- 
tions. This work is usually done during store 
time by those not serving in the store itself. Ja- 
son has taken home examples to do or has done 
them in school free time in order to be allowed 


180 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


extra service in the store as special messenger. 
Walter still writes 16 in place of 61, etc. Occa- 
sionally Vera, too, makes this mistake even in 
copying from the board. 

Alice asked for number work to do in free 
time one day and I started her and Emma work- 
ing problems from an Arithmetic book. Walter 
came in and asked to do the same kind next day. 
Since then a craze for book work has spread 
through the class, with the exception of Jane, 
Jason and Leonard. Problems “with reading” 
are specially sought and done very readily as the 
technical difficulties are slight. 

Drawing the plan of a house to the scale of 
8 feet to an inch proved very interesting and the 
dimensions of the whole house and of each room 
were found by translating the measured inches to 
feet. The question of area arose in this connec- 
tion for both Herbert and Vera and they easily 
caught on to the process of multiplying length 
by width to obtain square feet after I drew out 
some square feet to show what was meant by this 
term. Alice is particularly fond of mental arith- 
metic games which she often starts. Drill on 
the tables has led to practice in taking fractional. 
parts of numbers, too, and this often enters into 
the mental arithmetic games, but usually causes’ 
several children to drop out. | | 


i 


FOLLOWING THE CHILD’S LEAD 181 
| Subtraction that involves borrowing still has 
‘lifficulties for most of the group. Only Alice, 


'dmma, Herbert and Grace never ask for help. 


} 


WRITING AND SPELLING 


' Acraze for writing stories by all the girls fol- 
‘owed the introduction of a regular writing period 
/wice a week. Jason, Harry and Walter, who 
lictated to me a fine cowboy story, were very 
villing to start copying it into their books, but 
teeded pressure to get it done. Walter has done 
ery good writing when he works alone in the 
‘tore and is improving. He takes pleasure in a 
leat looking page, and so does Jason. Herbert 
writes easily and willingly, composing original 
tories. Leonard still writes beautifully but la- 
‘oriously, and escapes to the typewriter if I let 
im. I announced as a general rule that first 
‘hoice of the typewriter would be given those who 
ad a good handwritten copy with correct spelling 
‘nd sentence formations and this has helped to re- 
‘eve the pressure. Spelling shows improvement 
a familiarity with frequently recurring syllables 
ke “er, tle, sion, ing,’ etc., and I can answer 
‘uestions as to spelling often by simply referring 
2 other similar words (i.e., spell “light” like 
night”). Bertha, Emma, Harry and Alice are 


182 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


recognized as authorities and appealed to when I 
am not available. 


READING 


See list of books appended at end of notes. 

Jason and Leonard came back after the holi- 
days eager for a new Indian book to read. if 
gave them “Dokos,” but they did not take to it as 
well as to “Red Feather.” Walter brought a 
“Book of Cowboys” to school and read it steadily 
with enthusiasm though it was written in adult 
style. He followed this with “Buffalo Bill’s 
Boyhood.” Margery has now started on “Red 
Feather II” and reads it alone in free time as well 
as in the regular reading period. Unfortunately 
her ability to gather the content of a story without 
knowing the actual words makes it possible for 
her to get enjoyment without accuracy and she 
feels no need of assistance and resists reading 
aloud to me. She, Elizabeth and Jason are now 
the only ones who need special help, and Elizabeth 
and Jason are glad to read with me or a studen! 
teacher. 

About the middle of the month, Leonard sud: 
denly developed a reading enthusiasm that ha: 
quite launched him into ability to read any kin¢ 
of material that interests him. He began by read 


FOLLOWING THE CHILD’S LEAD 183 


ing the “Cliff Dwellers” through at a sitting. 
(Jason, too, started this but broke his glasses and 
Nell finished it aloud for him.) This, Leonard 
followed by ‘“‘Mewanee,”’ also read straight 
through regardless of yard time, which I let him 
miss because it was a day on which we had danc- 
ng involving lively physical exercises. From 
“Mewanee” he went to “Apauk,” an Indian story 
| had read aloud to the group earlier and had 
‘ound so adult in style that I had skipped a good 
leal in reading aloud. He read this with the 
‘ame absorption and utilized parts of it in our 
lay. His surprise in his own en joyment of read- 
hg was amusing. The “Lake Dwellers,” too, he 
inished at one sitting. He has also read part of 
3aldwin’s “Explorers of the Northwest,” as have 
tarry, Nell and Emma. Jane had been reading 
he “Just So Stories” and “My Book House,” and 

feared both were too hard for her, so asked her 
everal times to read to me so I could check up: 
n it, but she always succeeded in convincing me: 
fe could read the stories she had chosen. 


LANGUAGE 


|The girls were all absorbed in writing stories 
hich had so little sign of interest in pattern or 
mse impressions that I called the group together 


184 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


one day for discussion of stories and suggested 
trying to make pictures in words as they did on 
paper. I proposed as illustration that some one 
dictate a short story that would make us feel 
like winter, and another about summer. Margery 
quickly responded but all the girls were eager to 
go on with their writing and had no desire to 
dictate. Walter, Harry and Jason, however, 
stayed with me to dictate a vivid cowboy story 
which interested them so much that they were 
quite willing to copy it into books of their own. 
Herbert wrote for himself a story of the same 
type to go into his “Book of Western Life,” and 
Leonard began one, but has only reached the mid- 
dle of the second chapter as yet. Margery’s story 
carried over the impetus I had tried to give to- 
ward more vivid expression, but the rest show 
little sign of it. I think the group needs much 
more opportunity for dictated stories than I have 
been giving them. 

(See appendix to notes for original stories of 
this month. ) 





IV. Organization of Information 
DISCUSSIONS 


At the first meeting after vacation, Jason raised 
the question of having some school pets, either 


SIUM I LES 


FOLLOWING THE CHILD’S LEAD 185 


rabbits or pigeons. There was general approval 
of the idea, and Jane and Emma undertook to see 
Miss Pratt about it. She came in next day to our 
meeting and told of the difficulties of giving the 
animals the kind of environment that would make 
them happy, but agreed to letting us have guinea 
pigs when Emma suggested a place where they 
could run wild and yet be somewhat protected. 
She also proposed a salt water aquarium. (None 
of this has materialized due to the pressure of 
other interests. ) 

In connection with the play we have been de- 
veloping, an outline map of New York was hung 
ap and New York City was identified as a start- 
ing point. The Hudson River was then put on 
n chalk, Fort Orange or Albany, the Mohawk 
River, Lakes George and Champlain were added 
Ny various volunteers and Walter put in the 
‘Great Carry” between Lake Champlain and the 
dudson and the Catskill and Adirondack Moun- 
ains. I told them there was a level plain around 
he shore of the Great Lakes and invited specu- 
ation as to the reason for this. Leonard and 
Walter were quick to present theories. Walter 
hought that soil washed down from the moun- 
ains by rain might have fallen into the lakes and 
‘ormed a level border around the edge, while 
eonard recalled that I had said once that the 


186 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


lakes used to be larger than at present and thought 
the border was old lake bottom.’ I asked what 
might have caused a contraction of the water 
surface and he suggested a widening of the open- 
ing into the St. Lawrence, so that “more water 
went out that way.” The girls listened but could 
not be induced to participate at all in the specu- 
lation. They acted timid and self-conscious. 

As the play interest was dropped temporarily 
after this, I introduced the pencil exhibit sent us 
by the Dixon factory and we discussed the origin 
of the graphite and cedar wood of which the pen- 
cils were made. As the graphite proved to come 
from Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain, a new in- 
terest was added to that section of the map. We 
looked for the route by which graphite could be 
brought to Jersey City, where the pencil factory 
is, and Herbert at once raised the question, “How 
do they get across the ‘Carry’? Trains were 
suggested and I told about the Champlain Canal 
across the divide. The necessity of mixing the 
graphite with clay led to a discussion of where 
this was to be found and Jason told of seeing 
it in New Jersey. Elise and Jane had seen bricks! 
being made at Kingston on the Hudson, but ait 
not know they had any connection with clay, | 
Harry reported seeing red clay and this led to a) 
discussion of iron in the soil. Walter told of 





FOLLOWING THE CHILD’S LEAD 187 


seeing old iron mines and Elise and Jane had seen 
them, too. Some one, I think Vera, said glue was 
used to put the two halves of a pencil together and 
where did that come from? Tom, therefore, in- 
vited us to visit his grandfather’s glue factory. 
(See trips. ) 

In the discussion which followed this trip Vera 
took a leading part. Her interest was especially 
keen in the “old streets’”’ we had seen in the neigh- 
borhood of Pecks Slip and their associations with 
the first Dutch settlers we have read about. 
Front Street, which we had read was filled in by 
settlers and which we had found now two blocks 
from the water front, raised the question of how 
sand was washed in by the sea in some places and 
taken away in others. Vera’s question, “How can 
you build on sand?” was answered by the boys, 
“You drive down to rock underneath.” Vera 
persisted, however, in asking, ‘“How can you drive 
into water?” and this led to reference to bridge 
supports and tubes under the river with constant 
tecalling of building operations seen in the city. 
_ Herbert and Walter, who had stayed home from 
the trip to make pencil leads of graphite in the 
aboratory, described their experience and showed 
the result. They said the lead broke very easily 
ind I asked if any one had any idea about what 
s done to harden it. Jane suggested putting it 


188 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


in the sun, with a reference in her mind I think 
to the hardening of clay in that way. As heat is 
really the answer to the problem this made a 
good introduction. | 

The trip experiences also brought out the con- 
nection between glue and gelatin which we saw) 
being prepared at the factory and the relation’ 
between glue and glove making. This last was! 
due to the fact that the main glue factory is lo-| 
cated in the Mohawk Valley near the glove center, | 
in order to utilize the unused bits of bones and! 
hides. ‘The children themselves suggested that| 
the glove factories were originally located there} 
because deer were plentiful and many skins could| 
be had. | 
_ The discussion of graphite and other forms of| 
coal was resumed and Emma described its origin| 
from leaves. Herbert said yes and from tree! 
trunks too, upon which there followed a lively’ 
discussion of the looks of decaying vegetation and| 
of the prehistoric forests. This once more | 
brought a question of the origin of the first ani-| 
mal and Jason launched forth upon an account of | 
how life developed from one-cell organisms with | 
propagation by budding and fission on to a de-| 
scription of low forms of sea life attached to the| 
ocean floor, like coral, etc. He had acquired this’ 
knowledge in Group IX earlier in the year and | 





PS oe 


FOLLOWING THE CHILD’S LEAD 189 


vas very clear about it in his own mind, but I 
jloubted whether he was really getting much over 
0 the rest so stopped his lecture. The next day, 
1owever, he was asked to repeat it to the group 
ind held their interest well. Emma brought in 
/ome pictures of coral formation to show us. 

» In connection with the interest in coal we had 
ome lantern slides from the Natural History 
Museum on coal mining and the children were 
specially interested in pictures of pieces of coal 
‘howing the imprint of leaves. Jane and Mar- 
rery went home together planning to search their 
yoal cellars for coal with these markings. Fur- 
her discussions led to a consideration of mining 
‘rom the point of view of the workers and the 
langers and disagreeable features of the work. 
Uhe length of the working day was counted up to 
ee how early a miner would probably have to 
eave home and when he would get back, and 
nuch interest was shown in the safety devices 
igainst gas. Child labor in mines was briefly dis- 
‘ussed and the laws against it, and I explained 
vhat a “union” means and some of its practical 
workings outside the wage bargain such as the 
nstitution of a check weighman at the mine head. 
_ Vera thought it would be rather risky to trust 
‘ven a fellow member to oversee this for you.) 

_ After the subject of graphite had been finished, 





Igo OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


we returned to the large map of the two hemi- 
spheres to trace the route by which cedar wood 
was brought from Florida to the Jersey City fac- 
tory. The coral formation of Florida was dis- 
cussed in connection with the growth of cedar 
there and climate was also discussed and the dif- 
ferent zones of temperature located on the map. 
By measuring distances, places of corresponding 
temperature were discovered on the Northern and 
Southern hemispheres. The Mohawk Valley gap 
was looked for on this big map which shows alti- 
tude in colors and was easily found. I asked 
why this physical feature was of importance to 
the trade of New York City and Leonard an- 
swered, “Because trains can get through and bring 
things to sell in New York.” I asked if it was 
used before trains, and “covered wagons.”  In- 
dians and buffaloes were mentioned as preceding 
railroads over this trail. : 
The use of the big map and the discussion of 
the temperature zones led to interest in South 
America, so I sent Alice and the boys all into the 
library with a student teacher one morning to look 
up books on rubber and report back to us. Mean- : 
while the rest of the group pursued a discussion 
of how paint used on pencils was made. This! 
led to coal tar dyes and turpentine and we located’ 


Seer ae e aw s 


FOLLOWING THE CHILD’S LEAD IOI 


the Southern forests where resin is gathered from 
pine trees and discussed the process and its ef- 
“fect on the forests. The rubber group came back 
enthusiastic over their discovery uniting in the 
_Tecommendation of a story Jason had found in 
~Chamberlain’s “How We Are Clothed,” and I | 
read this story to the whole group. The next 
day was spent on the trip to a steamer just in 
‘from Para with rubber, and several discussions 
Were on points brought out by this trip. The 
plasticene map making described above (I) also 
brought out much incidental discussion about 
South America, the two principal river systems, 
the location of Para, Manaos (on the Amazon) 
“Rio” and Buenos Aires, and the mountains “like 
a wall.” 


TRIPS 


There have been three trips this month: to the 


‘Higgins Glue Factory and Fulton Market, to the 
Natural History Museum to see a model of a 
‘mine working and some specimens of coal with 
leaves imprinted on them, and to Booth Steamship 
Co. docks at the Bush Terminal, at 33d Street, 


Brooklyn, to see a steamer in from Para with a 


cargo of rubber. 


IQ2 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD — 


The chief interest at the factory seemed to be 
in the machinery itself and in the laboratory 
where products were tested. Jason was particu- 
larly thrilled over this process and all saw very 
clearly exactly how the tests were made and for 
what purpose. A visit was also paid to the fleet 
of small fishing schooners at Fulton Market. The 
men on the docks and at the fish stalls talked to 
us about their fishing experiences. 

The Museum trip proved one of the most stim- 
ulating and satisfactory we have had because of 
the great interest in coal and fossil imprints. The 
children themselves discovered the most interest- 
ing exhibits and showed them to me. 

The event of the month, however, was the trip 
to the ship from Para. The docks were full of 
hams of crude rubber and hills of Brazil nuts 
with which the children were invited to fill their 
pockets. An officer took us all over the ship, in- 
cluding a trip to the engine room, where we talked | 
with engineers and stokers, saw the coal bunkers, | 
the instrument by which the orders are received | 
from the captain on the bridge, the machine which | 
makes salt water fresh and all the workings of | 
the ship. Maps of the Amazon and the ship’s | 
course were eagerly studied and many questions | 
asked about how wide the river was and how far | 
the ship could go. . | 





FOLLOWING THE CHILD’S LEAD 193 


STORIES 


Kipling’s story of the White Seal led to requests 
for more “from that book,” and we read the story 
of Mowgli which brought insistent requests for 
‘the “Second Jungle Book.’ Jason asked, “Who 
ever wrote such a good story,” which is the first 
time I have ever heard a spontaneous question 
about authorship from any one in the group. 
‘Mrs. Mitchell’s story about the invention of the 
first pencil was also enthusiastically received as 


was the story of rubber from “How We Are 
‘Clothed.” 


LABORATORY EXPERIMENTATION 


Walter and Herbert made pencil leads of 
graphite by mixing powder with water and work- 
ing the soft mixture into a glass tube as a mold. 
Most of the groups followed their example and 
tried the same experiment. 

_ Another day, Walter went down to the labo- 
ratory with a definite question in mind about 
“how you can send telegrams under water,” and 
he and Tom sent messages to each other under 
water with great success and enthusiasm. This 
ed to the plan of setting up a telegraph system 
between our class room and the laboratory. Jane, 


194 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


Margery, Jason and Walter worked on this and 
got it into working order. They proceeded to 
invent a code for their messages, but the tech- 
nique of using this proved too much for them and 
the sending of messages back and forward was 
so disturbing to the rest of the group that, on 
Miss Pratt’s advice, the telegraph was taken 
down, and experimentation in sending messages 
for the present, confined to the laboratory. 


ORIGINAL STORIES 
“Big Hide, the Cowboy”—Dictated 


Oh, look at the cowboys on the plains, herding 
up the cattle, throwing the lassos and catching 
and branding the steers! Big Hide, the cowboy, 
is riding his broncho—the broncho is jumping, 
swerving, Bucking!? Big Hide can’t be thrown, 
he holds on tight with his knees, his spurs are dig- 
ging into the flanks of the horses. Pink Nose, the 
horse, is kicking fiercely. The black steer has 
been thrown by Black Hide, the branding iron is 
sizzling on the hair and making the number of the 
ranch, 24 V.H. Now the cattle are near the river, 


2 Bucking is spelt with a capital at Jason’s request, “ta 
make it wild.” 


FOLLOWING THE CHILD’S LEAD 195 


they are plunging in like a mass of foam. The 
sowboys have lost control of the cattle, they are 
whooping and shouting, they are trying hard to 
erd them up again. Big Hide has thrown the 
dull! The rest are goring and horning each other 
decause they want to get to their leader. The 
other cows have trampled their leader. Now the 
towboys are chasing the herd further and further 
2ast. Now they have got them in the corral and 
are quieting them down and ready to sleep. The 
towboys’ work is now over, they are trailing home 
with sweating horses——By Jason, Harry and 
Walter. 


| “Western Life”—From Original Manuscript 
Big Bill—Chapter 


The cowboys are rounding up two thousand 
steers and cows. Just then we heard the rumbling 
of thunder. When the bulls heard the thunder, 
they began to plunge and rear and we had a ter- 
‘ible time trying to drive them toward the shed. 
We got all of the cows and calves in the shed. 
Then we had to fire pistols to make the bulls move 
coward their shed. Then we got two of the 
Jercest bulls corralled; then the other younger 


196 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


bulls got quieted down and didn’t have very much 
trouble getting them in their shed. The next 
day we let the cattle out to graze while we got 
ready for a buffalo hunt; all the cowboys got 
their guns and pistols and then we started off. 
We sent some other cowboys ahead to see if they 
could see any buffalo. Then one of the cowboys 
came galloping back and said they had seen a 
big herd of buffalo and one of the cowboys had 
seen a band of savage Indian warriors which were 
coming fast. Then all the cowboys prepared for 
a battle. They drew their pistols from the 
sheathes and loaded. Then they galloped away 
as fast as the wind. 


CHAPTER II 


Suddenly a savage Indian warrior rode up in 
front of me. He was fine to look at his face was 
painted with crimson with designs of hatchets, 
bows and arrows. He took his bow from his 
shoulder and drew an arrow from his quiver, 
then took careful aim and fired. The Indian fell 
from his horse dead. Then I saw four Indians 
appear. They took aim at one of the cowpunch- 
ers. He let the arrow fly, but the cowpuncher 
jumped from his horse. The arrow whizzed over 
his head. 


FOLLOWING THE CHILD’S LEAD 197 


“The Story of Fluffy Tail” 
| 
; 
_ Iwas born ina cold rocky den. My father was 
the leader of one hundred savage wolves. And 
he wanted me to be a savage wolf like him. One 
day he took me out hunting for some deer while 
we were following some elk tracks we suddenly 
heard the thud-thud-thud and a cowboy rode up. 
Then my father snarled and the hair on his back 
stood up on end with rage. Then he got back on 
his haunches ready to spring but the cowboy was 
too quick for him. 


By Herbert Fuller 


EDUCATIONAL TESTS 


In May, a Thorndyke-McCall reading test was 
given to the whole group of eight years old chil- 
dren, with the following results, expressed in 
terms of “reading age’: 


Alice 13 years 2 months 
Walter II years 9 months 
Emma II years 3 months 
Vera IO years IO months 
Leonard IO years 10 months 


Nell IO years 4 months 


LOS OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


Bertha IO years 4 months 
Grace Q years 8 months 
Jane Q years 2 months 
Elizabeth 8 years 8 months 
Harry 8 years I month 
Jason 7 years Q months 
Margery 7, years oO months 


Of these children only Harry, Emma and Alice 
had read before entering Group VII, so this rep- 
resents for all the rest two years of reading. 
Harry did not at all do himself justice, as he was 
so slow getting to work that time was up before 
he had finished half his paper. All the answers 
he had time for were accurate and he is really 
able to read any stories he likes. | 

Margery and Jason have had special coaching 
by a student teacher in quick reading from flash 
cards to get them sufficiently launched before 
the end of school to read for pleasure during the 
summer. I have also given them special work 
in spelling from dictation, choosing chiefly pho- 
netically spelt words and this proved so popular 
that other children have joined voluntarily. 


There is no one in the group even including these - 
two poor readers who does not read for pleasure | 
and demand time for it on the program, but Ja-_ 
son needs a specific type of content, Indians or 


5 
vt 
eit 
aa 


i 
Mi 
. FOLLOWING THE CHILD’S LEAD 199 


primitive man, with much action to hold his in- 
terest. 


NUMBERS 


A standardized number test given to the group 
showed every one to be up to grade ( 3A), four 
jo be one grade, two, two grades, and one child 
Jhree grades ahead. The showing would have 
een much better, had not the group fallen into the 
vad practice of pointing off every answer with 
wo decimal points, although the actual subtrac- 
ion, addition, etc., was accurate. This was due 
0 their store work and constant dealing with dol- 
ars and cents. 


BOOKS READ BY CHILDREN IN APRIL 
(*Whole book not read. ) 


Randall read: “Boyhood of Buffalo Bill,” “Book 

im Of Cowboys.”’* 

derbert read: “Children of the Cliff,” Dopp’s 

“Early Plainsmen,” Baldwin’s ‘Explorers 
of the Northwest.”’* 

\lice read: “Lolami, the Cliff Dweller,” Bailey’s 

. “Flint,” “Book of Knowledge,’* “The In- 
dian Story Book” (Wilson). 


200 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


Jane read: “My Book House.” 

Grace: “Just So Stories,’’* a Book House.” 

Vera: “My Book House.” | 

Margery: “Just So Stories,”’* “The Book of 
Knight and Barbara.” 

Harry: “Dokos, the Little Indian Boy,” ‘“Priva- 
teers of °’76” (Paine), “Play Awhile 
Reader.” 

Bertha: “Colonial Stories” (Tappan), ““Poems of 
Childhood” (Field). 

Elise: “Donkey John” (Morley). 

Leonard: “Mewanee,” “Children of the Cliff,” 
“Lodren, the Lake Dweller,” “Apauk.” 

Jason: “Mewanee,’’* “Children of the Cliff.” 

Emma: “Colonial Stories,” “Explorers of the 
Northwest.” 

Elizabeth: “Little Dog Ready.” 

Nell: “Moni, the Goat Boy” (Spyri), “Donkey} 
John.” 


BOOKS READ TO CHILDREN BY TEACHER 
(*Means read aloud to group.) 


“Story of a Piece of Coal,” Martin. 
“Commercial Geography,” Robinson. 
“Story of the First Pencil,’ L. S. Mitchell.* 
“Pencil Geographic Leaflets,” published by) 
Dixon Co. | 





A Ak AS 6a a ols » 


FOLLOWING THE CHILD’S LEAD 201 


“How the World Is Clothed” (rubber), Cham- 
| berlain.* 

“Geography and Industrial Studies,’’ Allen. 
“The Jungle Book,” Kipling. 

“A Visit to a Coal Mine,” Cooke’s “The World 
| at Work.” 


XI 
A CHILD'S WORGB 
I 


In few places has the belief been so amply 
justified that children are innately creative as in 
the Walden School. Few places perhaps have 
had the same conviction that given an environment 
which is creative and dynamic, that children will 
develop creatively and dynamically. Too many 


institutions write “Freedom” and ‘“Self-Expres- 


sion” large in prospectus and platform, but con- 
tinue old methods of repression and routine in 
their classrooms. But the Walden School has 
actually managed to get and to keep the child’s 


view of the world, and has built itself around that 


view. It really is, as its founder Margaret Naum- 
berg first called it, the Children’s School. 


A world to be real to a child, says Margaret | 
Pollitzer, must be child size. In it must be ma- 
terials he can handle and use, avenues he can 


explore. He must be able to give body to his 


fancies in paint or clay or block form, or act them | 


out with others who share his interests. Bernard | 


202 


SR grea 
SATIS SY wow 





A CHILD'S WORLD 203 


Shaw once declared that schools are prisons where 
the immature are confined a given number of 
hours a day to keep from bothering the mature. 
They are indeed prisons in more ways than one. 
Not only do they imprison the child physically, 
keep him cramped and silent all day in a single 
desk or room, but they imprison his mind and 
“spirit as well. 
With the results we are all sufficiently familiar. 
But the Walden School has dared to create a 
child’s world and then for the most part to stand 
aside and watch the children grow in it under 
conditions of real freedom. This applies not 
merely to the daily round of activities, but to the 
treatment accorded each individual as well. A 
‘child may have all possible outward freedom, but 
still be hampered by personal inhibitions and sub- 
jective difficulties. These difficulties must be in- 
telligently handled before the child can really 
function to the full extent of his powers. As will 
be brought out later, there is undoubtedly a con- 
nection b2tween this subjective understanding of 
the children in the Walden School and the extraor- 
‘dinary results they attain in creative work of 
all kinds. 

Unlike Miss Pratt’s school there is no attempt 
to define activities at given age levels, although 
of necessity older children demand more formal 


204. OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


instruction. Groups, according to Miss Pollitzer, 
are no more alike than the individuals composing 
them. A class of six-year-olds may be interested 
in studying boats one year and may embark upon 
an intensive study of waterways or of transpor- 


tation. ‘The following year the sixes may, be- 


cause of summer-camp experience, become inter- 


ested in primitive life and organization.. “The 
school,” says she, “is the child’s world and the 
course of study evolves out of the problems and 
interests arising from the immediate community 
life, leading to further and further realms of 
study.” This apparently hit-or-miss method of 


attacking subject matter does not leave the gaps 
in knowledge which one might expect. The chil- 
dren uniformly measure up extremely well in all 
the standard achievement tests and have a store of 
information frequently far in advance of their 





years. Some of the courses initiated by them are 
immensely interesting. During 1924 and 1925, 


for example, the twelve years old group studied 
anthropology with the help of Dr. A. A: Golden- 
weiser of the New School for Social Research. 
The course developed from an initial visit to. 
wholesale markets and observation of the immi-_ 
grant peoples in them. This led to a discussion | 


of races and their cultures and various experts 


were invited by the children to address them on 





A CHILD'S WORLD 205 


these subjects. Dr. Goldenweiser’s material on 
the Iroquois Indians so interested them that they 
asked him {fo return and the course thus gradually 
developed. The stenographic notes of the ses- 
sions show an amazing intellectual acumen and 
range of knowledge on the part of the students. 
‘They discussed such topics as primitive cultures, 
taboos, superstition, religion, morality, inheritance 
of acquired characteristics, and toward the end 
of the first term outlined a text on anthropology 
for children, since no satisfactory one exists. 
Similarly in science the children blaze their 
own trails and follow their own inquiries. A visi- 
tor tells of entering the science laboratory and 
seeing a dozen children of seven and eight years 
of age, absorbed in their work. Two or three 
were melting glass tubing preparatory to making 
thermometers, another group was experimenting 
with a steam engine, another with an electric bat- 
tery, an eager pair were making ink. The chil- 
dren worked steadily, consulting one another in 
low tones, occasionally raised in the excitement of 
new discovery. Off in a corner the visitor dis- 
covered an adult, his back turned to the room, 
busily engaged in writing in a notebook. , He paid 
no attention to the class, and the class paid no 
attention to him. Nobody had noticed the visi- 
tor’s entrance. She was wondering a little what 


206 OUR ENEMY THE CHILI 


she ought to do, when a lad ran uf to the man 
in the corner: “Oh, Slavie,” he aske], “what is 
the heaviest thing in the world?” 

“Slavie” regarded the boy thoughtfully for a. 
moment, then drew a book from the shdf. “Here, 
look it up for yourself, I really can’t temember.” 

The boy seized the book and looked at the title, 
“Whee-ee,” he whistled, “that’s chemistry !”” 

“Table of elements,” suggested ‘Slavie.” 
“Chapter eight or nine, I’m not sure which.” He 
turned to the visitor. 

“Are you the teacher then?” she inquired. 

“Well, you can call me that,” he replied, “at 
least I’m here.”’ 

But mainly he was there, he explained, as a con- 
venience, only occasionally as a necessity. The 
materials and apparatus were within easy reach 
of the children. They could come and use them 
as they pleased. They could feel their way about, 
get acquainted gradually with Bunsen burners, 
test tubes, batteries, magnets, little engines, small 
dynamos, bells, carbons, voltmeters, lenses, rub- 
ber tubing, glass tubing, scales, charts, and ref- 
erence books on science. A boy might begin in 
the spirit of play to heat glass tubing and find — 
that it could readily be turned into various shapes. | 
He might go from that to try to make thermome- 
ters, or as did one twelve years old boy to etching’ ‘ 


SE 








A CHILD'S WORLD 207 


glass, a process that required weeks of research. 
In his class journal the boy published an account 
of his experiment, which he had carried on from 
beginning to end with no help whatever from his 
teacher. 


: ETCHING GLASS 


“One time up at the science laboratory, I tried 
to etch glass, and after a few attempts I succeeded 
quite well. It was done in this way— 

“I first melted some paraffin as smoothly as pos- 
sible over a piece of clear glass. After it had 
hardened, I cut through the wax with a botany 
needle and made a small design and some letter- 
ing. I then poured some Hydrofluoric Acid 
(HF) over the wax, seeing that it covered the 
exposed glass, and then let it stand for about 
fifteen minutes. When I washed the acid off and 
scraped the glass clean from the wax, I found my 
design and lettering eaten into the glass. 

“Hydrofluoric Acid must be kept in wax bottles 
because of its dissolving glass, The equation is 
as follows— 


“4H F + SiO, = SiF, + 2H.0.” 


A study of power houses and the uses of the 
dynamo and generator in the city’s transportation 


208 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


system grew out of the free play of the older 
boys and girls with electrical apparatus. Excur- 
sions to factories, to electrical expositions, to 4 
power house of the subway, showed the children 
how the principles they had discovered in the 
school laboratory were applied to industry. 

The children do not always come to the labo- 
ratory to “play.” More often they come to seek 
the answer to questions raised in the classroom, 
or possibly in the domestic science kitchen. “Why 
does water boil?’ “Why does gas burn some- 
times with a blue, and sometimes with a yellow 
flame?” “Why does soap make dishwashing 
easier) ":4 

The seven years old children had decided to 
build a city in the back yard. They went to the 
science laboratory to find out how to lay pipes, 
how to make a concrete bed for their river, how 


to equip the houses with an electric light system. 


They discussed why oil had to be used on con- 


crete. All knew that oil would prevent the con- 


crete from sticking. “Why should it?” asked’ 
“Slavie.”” A seven years old boy answered him, 
“The wood has pores into which concrete goes! 
and sticks. But when you use oil, it fills up the” 
pores and prevents the concrete from sticking.” 


1 See also “Creative Science Teaching,” by R. S. Slavson 
School and Home, January, 1924. 


a Net 


NNT DOr A Ay RS 


} 


A CHILD'S WORLD 209 





The children discovered what proportions of sand, 
‘gravel and cement to use, and mixed their own 
‘concrete. In digging for the river bed they took 
‘up the study of rocks and learned the difference 
‘between granite, quartz, felspar and cinders. 
/They even found some volcanic material in the 
‘fill of the soil. 

_ Sketches were made of the tools and materials 
needed and some spelling drill was found neces- 
‘sary for the more difficult names: trowel, hoe, 
‘shovel, hammer, wedge, concrete, cement. After 
‘the city was built, histories were written of its 
making. 

Such a method as the foregoing has little in 
‘common with that of the ordinary text book on 
‘science with its neat beginning of laws and prin- 
ciples and scientific terms to be learned by rote. 
But as Dewey long ago has told us, most teach- 
ers start where the expert has left off. In their 
‘haste to save the child’s time and get him edu- 
‘cated quickly, they assume that they can short- 
‘cut the process of experimentation and present 
the child with its finished conclusions. Under 
duress, the youngster may succeed in cramming 
‘down the indigestible lot of facts required, but 
of course he more rapidly succeeds in forgetting 
them when examination time is past. That loss 
is unimportant. What is important, however, is 


210 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


the lack of opportunity afforded the child for 
actual experimentation along lines related to his 
own interests, and of learning thereby the scien- 
tific approach to his own problems. | 

Such opportunities are abundantly offered in 
“Slavie’s” laboratory. Moreover through the ap- 
parently haphazard experimentation of the early 
months, the children succeed later in solving prob- 
lems in physics and chemistry frequently reserved 
for college grades. They also make things which 
few college students have the chance to make, 
Wet cells, plunge batteries, electric signs, resist- 
ance lamps, electrically propelled canal boats, mov- 
ing picture machines, star finders are only a few 
of the products of children all twelve years old) 
or younger. : 

Since children, if given the opportunity, will) 
always prove creative, it is no more surprising! 
that a child, given free play with science mate- 
rials, should use these materials creatively and 
inventively, than that he should use color beau-| 
tifully, dance, or model, or write with skill and 
a high degree of merit. The paintings of the 
Walden School children have been on exhibit for : 
successive years at leading art galleries of the 
city and have attracted an unusual amount of at- 
tention from artists and professional critics who 
have been astonished at the originality, the de- | 










A CHILD'S WORLD 211 


sign, the feeling for composition, the richness and 
solor of the work. 

Mrs. Cane, their gifted artist teacher, would 
wobably disclaim all credit for these extraordinary 
‘esults. Man, she believes, is born with the power 
0 create. Almost any little child can learn to 
jaint as naturally as to speak or to write.? They 
ire all languages of his being, and their great 
ralue is as a channel of expression for the child’s 
ubjective life. If he be denied expression of 
is subjective life, he will be a starved and 
hwarted being. 

With this faith in the child’s natural creative 
yower, Mrs. Cane employs none of the ordinary 
eaching methods. The children have no models, 
to instructions, few directions of any kind. They 
re given, from the earliest years, plenty of large 
laper, and crayons and paints. Mrs. Cane’s di- 
ections are confined to simple technicalities con- 
-erning the care of their brushes, and paints, how 
nany ways there are of retrieving work, by scrap- 
fig with a palette knife, or using turpentine and 
. tag to wash it clean, or painting over obstinate 
arts with white paint. She never works on a 
hild’s canvas, and she never makes any sugges- 
ions of any kind unless she is asked to do so. 


2“Teaching Children to Paint,” by Florence Cane, The 
lris, August, 1924, pp. 95-101. 


212 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


Even then her suggestions seldom have anything 
to do with the canvas itself, but usually with the 
child’s idea concerning the work. Usually there 
is some inner inhibition which prevents the child 
from going forward freely. 

Fear of failure is the most usual inhibition. 
One little girl, she relates, had painted her first 
picture, a study of a jar of flowers, a rather con- 
ventional affair, and now she was sitting facing 
a blank canvas, desirous of doing something of 
her own creation, but fearing to make the plunge. 
“T can’t paint!” she exclaimed after a little time 
had elapsed. “What would you paint,” Mrs. 
Cane asked her, “if you could paint very well?’ 
“An idea evidently came to her like a flash,’ Mrs. 
Cane writes, “for her face lit up and she began 
describing a scene that had recently impressed 
her. A gray sea and sky, a sandy beach, and a 
little old woman in black on the beach alone, look- 
ing out to sea. It must have made a strong im- 
pression on her, because the description came so 
clearly and with intense feeling. I said, ‘Well, 
where would you put the edge of the beach?’ Her 
hand made a quick line. ‘And where would the 
sea and sky meet?’ She drew another quick line. 
‘And the old woman?’ I asked. She stopped and 
said, ‘I can’t draw an old woman with a shawl. 
So I volunteered to pose. J drew a sweater ovet 


A CHILD’S WORLD 213 


smy head and shoulders like a shawl and turned 
‘my back. She sketched it roughly and thanked 
‘me. I left her and without further ado she fin- 
‘ished the painting, and an extremely fine thing it 
was, full of the sense of the sea and grayness and 
‘loneliness. It was only her second painting, but 
the feeling she had about the scene carried her 
‘over the problems she met on the way. She for- 
got her fears.” 

It is because the children are working so freely 
‘and unconstrainedly, that their various forms of 
expression are so good a clue to their inner states 
of mind. In the ordinary school where the chil- 
dren are restricted and held up to an imposed 
standard, their products have a stereotyped uni- 
formity that makes it almost impossible to distin- 
guish one child’s work from another’s. But in 
the Walden School, each child’s painting or writ- 
ing is intrinsically his, and accurately represents 
his stage of development at the moment of its 
creation. The painting of one adolescent girl of 
a dimly drawn figure under the sea with a red 
tree of life on either side, could not have been 
done by any other child in the school, nor by the 
girl herself at any other period. Similarly the 
turbulent seas and wind strewn beaches drawn 
Over and over again by a ten years old boy bore 
Witness to his unhappiness over an unsatisfactory 


214 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


relationship with his mother. When through the 
efforts of the school psychologist and the boy’s 
teacher, the mother became aware of the situation 
and changed her attitude, the boy’s work immedi- 
ately reflected his new confidence and serenity. 
He began to draw pastoral scenes, later turned to 
broad and powerful designs. The children are of 
course quite unaware of the symbolism of their 
work—the girl who pictured the gropings of her 
unfolding life, stated quite simply that she had 
drawn a picture of a girl under the sea—the pic- 
ture spran from her unconscious. 

The teachers of the Walden School have learned 
to read the evidence afforded in the drawings, 
writings and other creative efforts of the children.) 
If some of them perhaps carry this psychoanalytic 
interest—particularly in their vocabularies—to an 
extreme, it still remains true that the school is un-_ 
usually perceptive of the subjective growth and’ 
needs of its children and unusually responsive to| 
these needs, | 

In one sense neither Miss Pratt’s nor the 
Walden School is experimental. These happy, 
vitalized children whom one observes in them are 
proof enough that what these schools are achiev- 
ing is of supreme social worth. Bertrand Russell 
recently remarked that public schools have long 
demonstrated the possibility of giving instruction 





A CHILD’S WORLD 215 


without education, that, in fact, any schoolmaster 
) who was caught educating was quickly “given the 
sack.” With the growth of schools like these, and 
with the gradual incorporation of their principles 
mn the public-school system, it may come to pass 
that education and instruction will become iden- 
‘ical—a thing never before achieved under the 
sun, 


)! 


II 


A few of the writings of the Walden School 
shildren are reproduced below (unedited as to 
ipelling, punctuation or any other respect). None 
of the children of course have had formal ‘‘com- 
hositions” or formal instruction in grammar or 
jpelling. Nor have they had any assigned themes, 
following the usual school procedure of enu- 
‘merating the special points to be included. The 
thildren write when they have something to say, 
‘vhen some experience has touched off their will to 
hat particular kind of expression. The experi- 
‘ce may have been an excursion, a class discus- 
sion, some recent book or conversation. No one 
fictates the form, although frequently of course 
me child will start all the rest writing verse, or 
‘airy tales or wild west stories. 

No attempt was made to select the work of bril- 











216 OUR ENEMY TE.E CHILD 


liant nor specially gifted children. The selections) 
were literally taken at random from the files. It) 
might therefore have been possible to find com-| 
positions possessing more literary promise. It) 
should also be added perhaps that the teachers of 
the Walden School do not feel that the children 
reach as high a standard in writing as in some of| 
the other means of expression. There is no mem- 
ber of the staff who is as sensitive to the art of| 
writing as Mrs. Cane, for example, is to painting,; 
The selections show sufficiently well however with; 
what freshness and charm children will write! 
when living in a free environment. 

It has also seemed worth while to reproduce} 
at the end a few compositions of public schooll 
children of approximately the same age, also 
selected at random. 


Tue RaAIn AND I 


It had begun to rain very softly and I wished) 
to go out. I did so watching the rain. I sat 
down quietly thinking how lovely the rain was,| 
when a feeling came over me that made my heart} 
warm within me. My eyes closed and I could 
hear the soft patter of the rain falling on the roof 
and the deeper noise of the rain falling down into 
the court. The feeling was still over me when 
someone called me and instantly I lost this quiet 
feeling and I became my louder self again. 
| LouisE LEE (Age I1.1I). 





A CHILD’S WORLD 217 


DAINTY RAIN 


Soft light dainty rain 

Dropping ever so softly on the World 
Mingling with the sound of running water 
| Which is falling from the houses near by. 
| Louise LEE, 





LITTLE CHILDREN 





Little children dancing about in the rain 
‘Opening their little hands to catch the playful 
i drops 
‘Oh, rain, Oh, rain, you pretty silver fairies 
‘Play with us, play with us, 
Wet our hair and we shall laugh, 
Tumble us about in your fury 
‘And we shall not mind. 
Rain and rain forever 
So we may play with you. 
Louise LEE. 


Lights — Lights — Lights —all colors, reds, 
greens, yellows, glaring at you from all sides 
looking like dragons and fearful monsters. But 
they are all so crowded together, it is hard to 
make out that they are advertisements of tires, 
bottles of ginger ale, tooth brushes, chewing gum 
and thousands of others. 

Then you see the people rushing back and forth 
in excitement, usually dressed in their best going 
to theatres, dinners and a number of other places. 


218 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


And they all blend into a mass of darkness and 
color. | 
ANNA FLEISHER (Age 12.9). 


EVOLUTION 


Nothing blue nothing green, 

Everything a swirling whirling mass, 

Crashing falling thundering, 

Flames piercing through rock and gorge 

A falling whizzing sound, a settling thud 

_ All is quiet except for a hissing swishing | 

A heat that penitrates the most staunch barricades, | 

Then night—what is night : 

Darkness, blackness, silence. 

A glow, a warm warm glow, 

A sphere of red and yellow light, 

Stars, moons, Planets, 

Circling, swirving, twirling 

Clouds passing, 

Shape of animals, seas, spirals, vast mountains. | 

Now Water—wetness, | 

Cells, single cells lonely slowly bees yaa | 

They multiply, divide, | 

Swim side by side, 

Crawling, sprawling, falling 

Now plants, trees, vines that twine and climb 

And after centuries and centuries of development | 
Dinosaurs | | 

Beasts whose hinds and fores could reach for | 
miles and miles, | 

They swam and played and talked through genera- 
tions, | 





A CHILD'S WORLD 219 


»After eons of changing, these huge vertebrates 
were gone 
Never more to return—extinct, 
Out of this came Man. 
ANNA FLEISHER (Age 12.7). 


I object to telling my thoughts about religion, 
because they are very delicate. Like a soap 
‘bubble. If I touch it, it bursts. 

I will say this though. I do not believe in any 
established religion. And I do believe in some- 
‘thing superior. But how I believe and feel about 
‘it, is inside my soap bubble. 

IsABEL SOLOMON (Age 12.8). 


We boast of having many things belonging to 
us. How free we are. And the power of our 
brains. 

Yet we belong to a world which may boast of 
having all of us in its power. Try as we may we 
cannot leave the earth, our master. 

We cannot overcome its powers with our best 
products. It can send from its depths fire, water, 
a mass of things and tear us to pieces. While we 
scratch the surface with our dynamite, thinking 
we are controlling the earth. 

We think we are strong, unconquerable.. We 
‘are not masters. There are other powers. 

Jean WOLFSON (Age 13.1). 


Darkness on all sides but one small hole. Low 
jagged rock sticking out. Wet moist rock. 
A small dent in the rock, water has fallen here 


220 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


for years. A small hole a foot in diameter inside 
a descent. 

Low walls, a passage then a small opening, 
Water on top. Crystal clear flakes of snow. Be- 
low an ice floor. Another passage leading on, 
A wall. 

Back again in the ice room, up the passage. 

The hole—no, no hole at all. The horror of 
_ being cased in for ever. Dieing of want. Then 
the opening again. 

Into the main cavern at the opening, and then : 
light ! 
Jean Wo .rson (Age 13.4). 


A calm and beautiful stillness lay over me 
I could not move 
It was like a spider’s web 
So finely worked, so intricate, 
I could not move 
I was still and silent 
I could not move. 
ANNE WERTHEIM (Age 10.10), 


It covers the city like a mist 
The wind blowing gaily about 
Flurrying, hurrying it about, 
Now I can see only the tops of the buildings, 
But the snow is so flurrying 
I almost see the buildings waa 
_So flurrying 1s the snow. 


A Snow Storm 
ANNE WERTHEIM (Be 10.10). 


A CHILD'S WORLD 221 


‘l saw a great big snow flake gliding slowly down 
to the ground. On it I saw something which 
looked like a girl and I think it was Diana. 
Kurt Fetz (Age I1.10). 


The snow is made up of fairy like shapes, 

littering around, wandering here and there. 

Falling lightly, melting, 

While some pile up and make a mountain of snow. 
DIANA SIMON (Age Io.I1). 


) 7 An INDIAN DANCE 


With a sound that is hardly audible 
The Indians start their dance. 
The older man with rythm that is perfect, 
They beat their tom tom on and on, 
Slowly the beating stops 
And the warrior take their places. 

DiANA SIMON (Age I0.11). 


WHAT THE CHILD oF 1825 THINKS 


I heard a sound 

I looked around, 

I couldn’t see a thing. 
But now I know, 
It’s truly so! 

It was the fairy king! 


WHat THE CHILD OF 1925 THINKS 


Oh! something stirred! 
I’m sure I heard 


222 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


A movement of some kind! 

Oh, ding bust gosh! 

That’s lots of bosh! 

"Iwas my subconscious mind! 
Witma SuHoreE (Age 11.3). 


THE ADVENTURES oF BusHy TAIL 


Bushy Tail was a baby squirrel and a lively 
squirrel. Why when he was about two weeks old 
he was as lively as two squirrels about one year 
put together. You know he could jump from one 
tree to another as quick as a flash of lightning. 
It was wonderful to see him jump, that is if you 
could see him which you cant do unless you were 
a squirrel too, because he was too quick for you. 
The minute you came anywhere near him he 
would scoot away into the farther recess of the 
forest and there would start burying nuts, that 
is if it was nut season. For you must know he 
was a fox squirrel and he buried more nuts in a 
year than a fox squirrel usualy does. He was 
spry I'll say he was spry. He could beat a martin 
in a straight away race in his home range and in 
a regular race, that is a crooked race dodging and 
hiding behind the trees in an unknown place. But 
it sure was as hard as anything, that’s what Bushy 
Tail said and you can’t blame him either. Be- 
cause a martin can go through trees very quickly, 
a squirrel can too but he usually gets caught, 
Bushy Tail never did he always got away. It was 
often luck I must admit. Because something else 
would fortuneately lead the martin away from. 





A CHILD’S WORLD 223 


him. And sometimes he would get away by using 
all the strength and speed that he had and could 
use. Well he was a thoroughbred squirrel no 
denying that. The only trouble with him he was 
too brave, too bold; he was too sure of himself. 
Why after he had a tricked a martin into killing 
himself he boasted altogether too much. But 
aside from that he was perfect. 

"Of course he wasn’t the most marvelous squirrel 
in the woods but just the same he was very lively 
and full of fun and mischief, don’t forget the 
mischief. But you know how it is nobody can 
be perfect, they can be almost perfect but not 
quite. Well he would frisk around with some 
other squirrels for about a day or two and then 
he would frisk away to find some other playmate 
either a squirrel or a chipmunk. That was an- 
other of his faults which I forgot to mention that 
‘was all. One day in the spring Bushy Tail dis- 
appeared the mating time had come. There was 
‘nothing strange about that. Only there was some- 
thing strange about the fighting done in the forest 
‘in the last few days. All of a sudden the fighting 
stopped it was because Bushy Tail had mated and 
‘then he foolishly got caught by a boy who was 
coming along through the forest and spied and 
‘caught him before he could get away. That was 
‘careless of him alright then he got away in one 
day and was never carless again. 


THE END 


CHARLES ORDMAN (Age 9.6). 


224 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


A STORY OF THE War oF I812 AND OTHER 
Stories By M. Most? 


Note-to-reader 


I want you to get acquainted with this book 
before you read the stories, so that you should 
not misunderstand it. First of all I want you to) 
know that this book is not a book of war stories. 
just because of the first story being a war story, 
in this book there are different types of stories, 
such as (war stories, fairy-tales, ghost stories and 
animal stories etc. etc.) which are seldom found 
in other books. The reason why I did this was 
because I had a lot of diffrent kind of ideas (for 
stories) that could only fit in one book, so I wrote 
them all down in one book and that was the 
simplest thing that I could have possibly done. 

| M. Most. 

P.S. There are also poems in this book. 


LIST OF STORIES AND CHAPTERS 


A story of the war of 1812 


Chapter iD...) MN ls / 
Chapter II)... 0.0.7 IO 
Chapter TI)... 2 io eA 


Chapter TV i2..... 40 


1 Age: 10.5. 





A CHILD’S WORLD 225 


A STORY OF THE WAR OF I8I2 
Chapter I 


Captain Lilienthal* (of troop A in the regi- 
nent No. 57 of the American Army) was called 
n to one of the higher officers of the regiment 
ind was told that he had to go on the battle field 
igainst the Canadians. This was exciting news 
(although he had been expecting it for almost 
three months) so at once the preparations began. 
Now I have forgotten to tell you that this was 
yne of the smallest of the troops in the regiment. 
This troop was composed of only 30 men (and 
‘this was some of their names; 

Mr. Lilienthal (The Captain) 

Mr. Most and Mr. Goldstein (The Two Spies) 

Mr. Ordman (The Sentinel) 

_ Mr. Spear and Mr. Glaser (The Guards) 

Dr. Schwartze (The Doctor) 

Miss Bare (The nurse) 

PCH TCs s* 5. 
and evry one of them was so excited that they 
could hardly stand on their legs. And so every- 
thing was prepared for the battle! 

The end of chapter one 

(Illustration here, entitled, “They begin their 

journey.’ —Ed.) 


Chapter II 


And then they travelled till night came. And 
then came their first hardship, for they soon found 
out that they were short of one cot. If such a 

2 (Names of characters are all Mr. Most’s classmates.) 


226 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


thing would have happened any other time then 
one of the soldiers woud take his blankets and 
sleep on the groun, but since it had rained the 
night before and the ground was to damp to sleep 
on without getting sick. But soon their troubles 
were over, becaus Mr. Goldstein and Mr. Most 
volunteered to sleep on the same cot, and since 
then they were very close friends. 

Nothing important enough to write down hap- 
pened after that while they were traveling so we 
will have to be content to find the troop in the 
place where they wanted to be. ... Now we 
must picture in our minds Captain Lilienthal sit- 
ting on his cot while one of the privates came 
rushing in, his face as pale as a ghost. “What 
is it’’ asked the captain in his calm way. “An 
enemy's plane was sighted” answered the private. 
“What of that?” asked the captain. “Well—it— 
it threw a bomb on us—which landed 200 yards 
away from camp” answered the private. “Bad 
luck—send for the two spies at once,” said Cap- 
tain Lilienthal. And in a moment Mr. Most and 
Mr. Goldstein were hurrying away from camp. 

The End of Chapter Two 

(Illustration here, entitled “The Throwing of 

the Bomb.’’—Ed. ) 


Chapter ITI 


After Mr. Most and Mr. Goldstein had been 
trotting for a few minutes Mr. Most said to Mr, 
Goldstein, “Now we have to part’—‘Don’t you 
remember what the Captain said,” said Mr. Most, 


A CHILD'S WORLD 227 


“so we will have to say goodbye, for we may not 
be able to see each other again.” “I know what 
you mean” said Mr. Goldstein sadly, “but I hope 
‘it doesn’t happen” he said as he troted slowly 
‘away. Mr. Most spied wherever he was told to 
spy, but he came back without any news, but Mr. 
, Goldstein had, what we can call, an adventure. It 
was like this. After Mr. Goldstein had been trot- 
‘ting a while, he came to the enemy’s camp that he 
was told to spy on. So he hid in some bushes 
and waited for a half an hour and then he saw a 
scout hurry away from the Canadian camp, so he 
followed the scout for a quarter of a mile and 
then shot him through the head and then (after 
examining him a great deal) he found a note 
in his shoe. He was so excited that he almost 
‘opened the letter and read it himself but then he 
‘remembered that the Captain had told him that 
‘(if he got anything) he should deliver it into his 
hands without reading it. So he trotted away 
towards camp. Now it happened that while Mr. 
Goldstein was shooting the Canadian scout, an- 
other scout happened to be near and heard the 
noise, so he followed Mr. Goldstein a little ways 
and then hit him on the head with a club and Mr. 
Goldstein fell immediately unconscious. And 
after that he couldn’t tell what happened for what 
seemed to be an age. But any ways when he re- 
covered his consciousness he found himself lieing 
in some hay in a tent that was so closed up that 
two germs couldn’t squeeze through the biggest 
crack in the tent if they wanted to. He was tied 
to the ground by some ropes that were attached 


228 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


to some stakes which was hammered in the | 


ground. 
The End of Chapter II] 


Chapter IV 


This was not very pleasing to Mr. Goldstein | 
because if he was tied up, it was impossible for | 
him to escape, while otherwise it might have been. | 
Well, if it was possible or if it wasn’t possible, | 
Mr. Goldstein decided to ESCAPE “And he | 
did”!!! It was like this :-— 

Harold (wich we shall not call by his second | 
name any more, since we are getting to know him | 
so well), was just about to make an efort to get | 
up, when in came Captain Gilooly of the troop of | 
wich Harold had been spying. Now something | 
told Harold that Captain Gilooly was very kind, 
so he made believe that he was suffering very 
badly, because of the way he had been tied up. | 
Now Captain Gilooly, thinking that Harold was | 
suffering, had pity on him and untied him. Then | 
Capt. Gilooly went out and left two guards at the | 
entrance of the tent wich was closed. And then | 
Harold got up from the hay and stood up in a | 
corner of the tent and (when Capt. Gilooly came | 
back to see how his prisoner was getting along) he | 
made believe he had no desire to go away, but | 
when Capt. Gilooly went out of the tent, Harold | 
began to look around in the tent and in anther 
corner he found a strong stick. Just as he was 
about to pick up the stick he heard a sound, it | 
came from the left of the tent, it sounded as if 





A CHILD'S WORLD 229 


“someone was walking on hay and yet it didn’t!!! 
“Yes no yes—,” he almost said it all aloud. It 
was to much for Harold, he would find out by 
himself. So he took the stick and made a big 
hole enough for his hand to go thru (in the direc- 
tion in which he had heard the sound). Then he 

‘stuck his arm thru the hole and all he felt was 
‘hay, instantly an idea came into his head—a way 
to ESCAPE!!! He set to work immediately, he 
took the stick and began to dig. He dug till the 
morning and finally made a hole big enough for 
himself to squeeze through. Now on the other 
side of the tent was a big haystack, so when 
Harold crept through the hole, he naturally was 
under the haystack. Then he started a terrible 

‘racket, so all the soldiers of the camp rushed in 

‘the tent, and while they were trying to find out 
how he escaped he crept out from under the hay- 
stack and ran for his dear life. And by the time 
the Canadian soldiers found the hole that Harold 
made, Harold was entering the American camp. 
Then Harold looked in his pocket and found the 
same note that he had taken from the Canadian 
spy, for the Canadians that had imprisoned him, 
had not known that he had had it. 

(Illustration here, entitled “The tent of 
Harold’s imprisonment, notice haystack on right.” 


—KEd.) 
Chapter V 
Immediately Harold brought the note to Cap- 


tain Lilienthal, and the Captain read it aloud. It 
said :-— 


230 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


Dear Captain Price; 

I (Captain Gilooly of troop R of the Canadiél 
regiment, No. 10) meen to make an atack on 
troop A of the regiment No. 57 of the American 
army, so kindly lend me some of the forces of 
your troop, so that my atack may be more power- 
ful. 

Your fellow officer, 
CAPTAIN GILOOLY. 


For a while, after Captain Lilienthal had read 
the letter, there was a long silence, then Captain 
Lilienthal said; where did you get that note? 
Then Harold told his story ending with—it’s a 
thing that happens once in a thousand years, but 
it happened! 

Afterwards Captain Lilienthal sent for 60 more 
men and because they were so well armed they 
won. And all because of Harold. 

The End of Chapter V 


(Mr. Most’s book of “Short Stories’ also ends 
here.—Ed. ) : 


PUBLIC SCHOOL COMPOSITIONS 


Many public school children write better “com- 
positions” than the following. There are gifted 
teachers who succeed in getting excellent results, 
as many school publications show. The composi- 
tions reproduced below are representative how- 


A CHILD’S WORLD 231 


ever of the sort of thing that children write when 

the task is imposed, the theme limited, and the 
premium placed on conformity. Nobody for 
example believes that any boy would spon- 
taneously write such a letter as the following: 


400 Pleasant Street, 
North Adams, 
January 9, 1925. 
DEAR JoE: 

When I grow up, I am going to try to be like 
Abraham Lincoln. I have just finished reading 
his life and I am delighted with it. He is a man 
for American boys to imitate, I think. Such a 
splendid example of perseverance, endeavor and 
noble self sacrifice. I shall probably not become 
the President of the United States, as he did, but 
if I can be as honest, studious, persevering and 
kind hearted as well, I will be sure to succeed in 
life and make many friends. 

Just think how he began! Why, I have twice 
as many advantages. So I shall do my best and 
keep my eyes on model, Wish luck to your 
friend, 


Tom CHRISTIAN (6A). 


THE INAUGURATION OF CALVIN COOLIDGE 


Our thirtieth president Calvin Coolidge took 
his oath as president of the United States at 
Washington, D. C. It was a gala day in Wash- 
ington. 


232 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


President Coolidge was inaugurated at about 
noontime. He took oath on a great platform 
which was built for that purpose. The ceremony 
was said by Chief Justice Taft. The bible was a 
little bible his grandmother gave him when he 
was five year of age. The bible was held by a 
close friend of the President. Charles G. Dawes 
was elected vice president just before President 
Coolidge took oath. Over 6000 people were 
standing on the streets and watched: President 
Coolidge go to the Capitol. President Coolidge 
after the inauguration went back to work. 

SARAH TOWNSEND (6A). 

March 5, 1925. 


ARBOR Day 


Arbor Day this year is on April twenty-fourth. 
We have had Arbor Day over thirty-five years. 
We first had Arbor Day in Nebraska. Arbor Day 
is for planting trees and flowers. The earth is 
nearly useless without them. 

Arbor Day is celebrated in school by planting 
trees and flowers. It is celebrated the first Fri- 
day in May or one of the last days in April. 
Arbor Day is spreading into every country. We 
need these trees. These trees make the earth look 
beautiful. Some trees bear fruit and we eat the 
fruit. It teaches children to love trees and learn 
what the trees give us. 

ANNA ANGELINO (6A). 

April 24, 1925. 


A CHILD’S WORLD 233 


The following six compositions were all written 
by members of the same 6A class following a 
visit to a library. Almost every child of the forty 
‘odd members of the class wrote an identical 


report: 


67 Van Ness Place, 
New York City, 
March 13, 1925. 
DEAR ANNIE: 

One day in last week my teacher Miss Dean 
took us to the Library. Miss Brown the 
Librarian read to us a story the name Dr. 
Dolittles. We enjoyed it very much. Than Miss 
Brown told us to go and read the books silently. 


The name of the book I read is What Katy Did. 
I enjoyed it very much. 


Than I read another book named the Laughing 
Prince. I am sure if you would be there too you 
would enjoy yourself there too. I very sorry 
that you were not there too 

Your loving friend, 
ELLA POLESI. 


152 Howe Ave., 
New York City, 
March 13, 1925. 
DEAR MoTHER: 
One day last week, my teacher took us out to 
the Library. When we came into the library we 
set down on chairs and Miss Brown, the Librarian 


234 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


read to us a story about Dr. Doliitle. It is a 


very nice story. He was a peoples Doctor, so and 
he loved pets al kinds his house was full of 
Animals. So nobody wanted to come to him. 
So he became a Animal doctor. After a horse 
came to him and he saw the doctor wear spec- 
tacles, so he said I want the same thing but green 
glasses. 

After she finished the story we went and picked 
out the boocks we liked. And read silently to our 
selves. Then we went home and we were carefull 
by crossing the street. 

Your loving daughter, 
Rose Pitsky. 


27 Hill Street, 
New York City. 
DEAR Mary: | 

One day last week we went to Library. 
When we reached there everything was ready for 
our class. Miss Brown, the Librarian read us a 
story called Dr. Dolittle. It was a very enjoyable 
story. 

After the story was over she Miss Brown said 
we can look and read some books. As I brought 
my own book I read that. I forgot to tell you 
that Chee Chee in monkey language means ginger. 
Finally we were allowed to go home. And on our 
way out we all thanked her. 

Your loving friend, 
EFFIE AARONSON. 


_A CHILD'S WORLD 235 


348 Willow Street, 
Dear Rose: Brooklyn, N. Y. 


One day last week my teacher took our class to 
the Library. Miss Brown, the Librarian read the 
book that is called Doctor Dolittle to us. 

_ After that Miss Brown said that Chee Chee in 
“monkey language meant Ginger. Then she let us 
_yead any kind of a book we liked. There were 
funny books and fairy tales. JI am sure you 
would enjoy the books that were there. 
Your friend, 
MINNIE MERKLE. 


798 K Street, 
New York City, 


Dear MOTHER: March 13, 1925. 


When the time came to go to the Libary our 
| whole class went. Mrs. Brown the Librarian told 
us about a story called Dr. Dolittle and it was 
very interesting because it was about animals. 
First his sister told him that he was getting poor 
because more animals came. So one day the cats 
meat man came and told him to give up the chil- 
drens doctor and be a animal doctor. After she 
was in the interesting part she stopped and told 
us to look around and read books. 

While looking around for a good book I found 
Jack and the bean stalk. I read about it and it 
was like this that he went to the giants house and 

killed them and took the gold. 

) Your loving son, 
Louis LEvI. 


236 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER 


During the War of 1812 a man wrote The Star 
Spangled Banner. This man’s name was Francis _ 
Scott Key. This man wishing to secure his friend 
went on board the ship but instead of securing 
his friend they made him a prisoner. : 

This man wrote this hymn on the back of an 
envelope. But by the stout defense of Fort 
McHenry they couldn’t conquer us. 

JACK Guass (6A). 

February 20, 1925. 


THE Star SPANGLED BANNER 


The Star Spangled Banner was written by an 
American man held prisoner on a British War 
Ship. This man’s name was Francis Scott Key. 

The British were firing very rapidly and wanted 
to get the American flag down. They fired at first 
at Fort McHenry but the Americans drew them 
back. But at last the British surrendured and the 
Americans won the war. And the American flag 
went up, and now we are independent. 

Davip Starr (6A). 


Feb. 29, 1925. 


THE Star SPANGLED BANNER 


While the War of 1812 a man was taken a 
prisoner on the British fleet. Because he went to 
see his friend and, he was taken as a prisoner, 








A CHILD'S WORLD 237 


| During the night he did not sleep but was out on 
the deck to see who would win. While he was 
watching he wrote on the back of an envelope a 
poem called the Star Spangled Banner written by 
Francis Scott Key. 

He watched all night to see if the American 
‘flag was still there, that would mean that the 
_ American won, if the British flag was up that 
ment that the British won. 
| Ipa BELL. 


Feb. 20, 1924. 


XII 
A NEW EDUCATION FOR LABOR 


A. TEACHER recently prophesied that the next 
heresy hunt will be directed against the rapidly 
growing number of people who believe in “ex- 
perimental” education. Some canny sleuth will 
discover that there is a direct connection between 
schools which set out deliberately to train chil- 
dren to think, and to develop creatively, and the 
radical movement. Not all progressive schools 
of course will be banned. There are some mildly 
Progressive institutions, often supported by large 
foundations, which are trying to prepare children 
to take their places more adequately in society 
as at present constituted, or believe that teaching 
techniques should be improved. They will be 
considered safe enough. The dangerous centers 
are those directed by people who have a vision 
of a new social order, and who believe that the 
way to prepare for it is to bring up a generation 
of free thinking, self-directing young people 
whose spontaneity, originality and native curiosity 
have not been stifled nor confined within narrow 
, Srooves of conformity. _ 

238 


A NEW EDUCATION FOR LABOR 239 


Some sleuth will be certain to reach these con- 
clusions, because organized labor has done so 
| recently and suddenly. We say recently, although 
30 radical an experiment as the Modern School 
in Stelton, N. J., has been run for years with the 
aelp of individual workers: and certain unions. 
‘But the school at Stelton has been an isolated 
sntity—a Tolstoyan voice crying in the wilder- 
ness of conflicting economic doctrines. Visitors 
to the school have been astonished that children 
without formal or with no instruction should 
achieve such frequently fine results in painting, 
in mural decoration, in rug weaving, in clay and 
pottery, no less than in ordinary acaderhic sub- 
jects, and the humbler crafts of printing, shoe- 
making and forge work. But that children thus 
permitted to develop naturally and creatively 
should later have anything to contribute to a so- 
‘tial re-ordering of the world, organized labor has 
not until now widely appreciated. 

_ Within the past year, however, leading unions 
have four times demonstrated their recognition 
of the organic relation existing between this new 
educational philosophy and the evolution of a 
‘better social order. The New York State Fed- 
eration of Labor issued its revised educational 
program listing some thirty-five specific recom- 
‘mendations for the improvement of the schools. 





: 





} 
240 OUR ENEMY ‘THE CHILD 


Many of these recommendations have long been 
urged by organized labor and in many places se- 
cured through its efforts: free text books, medi- 
cal and dental inspection and treatment, enforce- 
ment of compulsory education, vocational train- 
ing, free state scholarships, extension of kinder- 
garten classes and the like. Two new planks were 
included in this latest program which indicate 
labor’s increasing’ awareness of the part to be 
played by education in the necessary changing of 
social conditions. One plank was headed, War 
and Education, and ran as follows: | 


The organized labor movement, always in the 
forefront of service, whether in war or in peace, 
believes war to be the greatest menace to civiliza~ 
tion. The next war with its death ray, its disease 
germs and deadly chemicals, may mean the de- 
struction of civilization. Already munition mak- 
ers and those who profit by war are preparing for 
another war by their policy of financial impe- 
rialism and the propaganda for preparedness that 
goes with it. The organized labor movement 
cannot sit idly by without resisting the machina- 
tions of these selfish materialists who betray 
their country’s best interest for profit. We must 
meet their propaganda for war with efforts to 
preserve peace. We must appeal to the hearts 
and minds of America’s Youth to war for jus- 
tice—political, social and economic—and not to 
war against their fellow workers of other coun- 


A NEW EDUCATION FOR LABOR 241 


tries. In this struggle of preserving the peace 
of the world and civilization itself which hangs 
in the balance, the schools can render yeomen 
Service, 

To achieve the ends desired by all useful and 
socially minded citizens, we urge the reconstruc- 
tion of our school curricula to help root out those 
narrow ambitions and ancient animosities that 
haunt and dominate Europe and to replace them 
with a desire for cooperation. Our textbooks 
in literature and the social and natural sciences 
must be re-written to eliminate the glorification 
of war and to substitute the facts about war; its 
cold-blooded butchery; its elimination of the 
biologically fit through disease, starvation, unem- 
ployment and death; its misery because of eco- 
nomic chaos and its debts which bear so heavily 
upon the workers for the benefit of the profiteers 
and munition makers and financiers. Instead of 
stressing the glories of war let us stress rather 
the heroes of peace personified by such men as 
Gompers, Wilson, McDonald, Edison and the 
like. Efforts toward peace like the Hague Con- 
ferences, the Washington Conference, limitation 
of armament, outlawry of war and world coop- 
eration should receive due consideration. Only 
by striving continuously and cooperatively for 
peace can civilization be saved and the lot of 
mankind improved.—( Adopted by 1924 conven- 
tion. ) 


The other plank, Schools of the Future, bears 
more directly upon “experimental” education: 


242 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


The World War has led to a reéxamination of 
various institutions and the service being rendered 
by them. The organized labor movement re- 
gards education as the key to a better life. After 
a careful survey of our educational system it is 
of the opinion that the time has arrived for a 
thorough-going reconstruction of our educational 
aims, methods, equipment and curricula with a 
view of bringing them into harmony with present- 
day life and so that they may function effectively 
in the preparation for social living, 

Our present educational system needs whole- 
some revision where it is characterized by a tra- 
ditional and outworn curricula and methods, is 
artificially motivated, secures discipline essentially 
through coercion, imposes adult conceptions of 
life on changing childhood, or is deadening in its 
influence because of regimentalized school pro- 
cedure and lifeless and useless subject matter 
largely unrelated to problems of child life. More- 
over it is sometimes characterized by merciless 
“speeding up” to fulfill artificially established 
forms and it fails almost entirely to help pupils 
to live creatively and richly their normal lives. 

Our teachers and workers are of the opinion 
that the schools of the future must be built on 
freedom and cooperation, must liberate and or- 
ganize the capacities of children through oppor- 
tunities carried on under a curriculum as rich, 
varied and as fluid as the life of the children and 
their ever changing environment, and that the 
ideal teachers should be codperators who provide 
favorable conditions for self-development. 


A NEW EDUCATION FOR LABOR 243 


This plank bears the same impress as the pro- 
posal made by the Teachers’ Union of New York 
‘City, which after an intensive study of the lead- 
‘ing experimental schools in and near the metropo- 
‘lis, submitted to the local educational authorities 
ja well worked out plan for establishing a similar 
’axperimental center within the public school sys- 
‘tem itself. The proposal being promptly rejected 
‘by the board of education on certain technical 
grounds, the Union is now sounding out the pos- 
sibility of making necessary changes in the state 
education law. 

: Within the year also, two important confer- 
ences were held by leading educators and repre- 
‘sentatives of organized labor. One conference 
launched an experimental residential school pri- 
marily for workers’ children under the direction 
of Mr. and Mrs. William M. Fincke, who donated 
‘to the enterprise their 177-acre farm, with its 
‘numerous buildings, equipment and fifty head of 
dairy cattle, at Manumit, Pawling, N. Y. An 
association of people from the labor and educa- 
tional world was formed to direct the affairs of 
‘the school, with A. J. Muste of Brookwood as 
‘chairman of the executive board. 

The actual running of the institution is in the 
hands of faculty and students who share alike 
in the work essential to the upkeep of school and 








244 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


farm, as well as in the government of the school 
community itself. The children range in age from 
nine to fourteen, but older groups will be added 
each year until college grade or its equivalent is 
reached. Academic work, pursued this year un- 
der a modified Dalton plan, is confined to four 
morning hours, six days a week, releasing the 
students for other activities, no less educational, 
of their community life. These include not only 
the necessary chores, both indoors and out—cook- 
ing, dishwashing, and housecleaning, milking and 
feeding the stock, chopping and hauling the wood, 
etc., but plenty of recreational and social activities 
as well. Wholesome social living Manumit con- 
siders its most valuable educational factor. 

“The heart and marrow of a school like ours,” 
writes a member of the faculty, “is the commu- 
nity life. Community life itself is our definition 
of that freedom and responsibility in which every 
educational democrat believes. The community 
life of our school is the socialized incarnation of 
our belief in industrial democracy. It is our act 
of faith in the labor movement and in that good 
life, that rich and noble life for all, which the 
labor movement is going to bring in.” 

The other conference of labor representatives 
and educators launched the junior Youth Move- 
ment in America, a movement closely correspond- 








A NEW EDUCATION FOR LABOR 245 


‘ing to the organizations among children which 
have proved so successful on the continent. 
Pioneer Youth which operates under the auspices 
vof the National Association of Child Develop- 
ment, purposes to use constructively the leisure 
‘time of boys and girls from seven to eighteen. 
Through clubs and summer camps, conducted in 
the spirit of modern education, it is hoped “to 
encourage activities which will stimulate the criti- 
Neal and creative faculties of children, will liber- 
‘ate their minds from dogma and fear and will 
help each one to become a force for the recon- 
struction of society. . . . We believe that the 
‘salvation of society will require the elimination 
‘of the destructive military spirit, of race and 
‘national hatreds and of the exploitation of one 
-man by another.” 

_ There is however no dogmatic teaching of 
these ideas on the part of the leaders of Pioneer 
Youth. It is no part of their aim to impose 
. “sms” upon children, nor to attempt to turn out 
ready-made little socialists or radicals. Propa- 
ganda, they realize, has no place in an enlight- 
ened scheme of education: what is needed are op- 
‘portunities for children to become free creative 


_ personalities. 


1 This name has recently been dropped and the organization 
operates under the name of “Pioneer Youth.” 


246 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


Accordingly in the camp run last summer for 
148 boys and girls on the Fincke farm at Pawling, 
and in the nineteen clubs organized last winter in 
and near New York City, efforts were made to | 
have the children engage in the ordinary, normal 
healthful activities that children love to engage 
in anywhere. Sports, hikes, farm work, swim- | 
ming, nature study, dramatics, pottery, camp fire 
amusements, the publication of a camp journal, | 
written, printed and illustrated with cuts by the 
children themselves—these filled the summer days. 
The management of the camp was put in the 
hands of the children, who elected their’ own 
chairman—a capable lad of twelve—decided on 
their daily program, and made and enforced rules 
of camp behavior. On occasion, social and eco- 
nomic problems were discussed. 

“One of the finest things I ever learned,” wrote 
the youthful editor of the camp paper, “came 
about from a discussion around the camp fire. 
The subject was about the reason for race preju- 
dice. Up to that time I had never been prejudiced 
towards Negroes, Russians, Italians and Swedes, 
etc., but I had always maintained a severe atti- 
tude towards the Japs. At the beginning of the 
discussion I fervidly championed the recent Japa- 
nese Exclusion Act. A few sensible remarks 
against exclusion brought me back to my senses. 


A NEW EDUCATION FOR LABOR 247 


. I found then that my real reason in favor 
pf 2 ae was that I did not know the Chinese 
and Japanese as well as the other races. ... The 
whole discussion started because of race preju- 
dice toward colored people, which was proven to 
be wrong. In conclusion let it be said that many 
of the troubles of the world have been due to 
hatreds between mankind.” 

_ During the winter, several of the clubs under- 
took special investigations of social conditions. 
One is investigating fire traps in Harlem. 
Another is raising money and clothes for the West 
Virginia miners and is planning to visit textile, 
steel and mining centers. Other clubs are pursu- 
ing the ordinary activities of any young people’s 
organization, except that the management of the 
clubs is democratic, military discipline and mili- 
tary ideals do not prevail, and efforts are made 
by the club leaders to develop each child’s special 
Capacities so far as possible. 

By January, it had become apparent to alert 
labor unions that Pioneer Youth might become 
immensely important to the labor movement. On 
one of the coldest nights of the year, delegates 
from 103 unions attended a conference of Pioneer 
Youth to give it their support. Credentials were 
read and accepted from nine international unions, 
Sixteen central bodies and seventy-eight local 


he 


248 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


unions. These included the American Federa- | 
tion of Teachers, the International Association } 
of Machinists, the International Brotherhood of | 
Firemen and Oilers, the International Fur Work- | 
ers, the International Brotherhood of Pulp, Sul- | 
phite and Paper Mill Workers, the International | 
Ladies’ Garment Workers, the International | 
Pocket Book Workers, the Subway and Tunnel | 
Constructors International Union, and _ the : 
United Cloth Hat, Cap and Millinery Workers | 
Union. | 
Union funds have kept the movement going: | 
$soo from the International Ladies’ Garment | 
Workers, $400 from the International Fur | 
Workers, and $300 from the New York District | 
Council, No. 9 of the International Brotherhood | 
of Painters, Paperhangers and Decorators. The | 
conference passed a resolution calling on unions | 
to raise a fund of $5,000. It was also reported | 
that two camps will be run this summer, and the | 
work extended to Pennsylvania and New Jersey. | 

Yet actually the number of children involved so | 
far in Pioneer Youth is small—not more than two | 
or three hundred. Why then does every kind of | 
organization of laboring men hasten to endorse | 
it? Is it merely due to the energy and zeal of Mr, 
Joshua Lieberman, secretary of Pioneer Youth, 
that all sorts of workers—plasterers, hod carriers, 





——.. 





|  d y 


< ao 


| 


‘carpenters, painters, electrical workers, iron 


A NEW EDUCATION FOR LABOR 249 


workers, printers, railway carriers, clerks, express 
handlers, firemen and oilers, machinists and gar- 


-ment workers, furriers, leather workers, cap ma- 


kers, hatters, millinery workers, neckwear work- 
ers, subway constructors, bakery and confection- 


ery workers, cigar makers, butchers, laundrymen, 


stage employees, paper workers, bookkeepers, pat- 
tern makers and teachers—come forward collec- 
tively with unqualified support? With due credit 


| to the services of Mr. Lieberman, we believe that 
such widespread endorsement of an educational 
| project would scarcely be given by organized labor, 
were labor not becoming increasingly aware of 


i 


the necessity of fundamental educational reform. 


A century ago American labor helped to estab- 
lish for the first time in any country the great 
experiment of free and universal education. Suc- 
cessful as the experiment has been in many re- 
spects, signs are not wanting that the shortcom- 
ings of the present educational system are many 
and serious, that indeed unless a more vital, and 
dynamic type of education replaces the one now | 
prevailing, the public school will prove a stumbling 
block to social and industrial progress. That 
labor is once more taking an aggressive attitude 
towards elementary education is one of the most 
hopeful signs of the times. 


XIII 
FUTURE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 


For many years the term “social” has been one 
to conjure with in education. The big impelling 
motive in education, we are told, is the social 
motive. ‘All our schools,’ says one superin- 
tendent, “elementary, intermediate, secondary and 
collegiate, must in the future strive to realize more 
fully the seven great social aims of education.* 
This number was enunciated by the National Edu- 
cation Association and included health, mastery 
of the tools of learning, good citizenship, worthy 
home membership, vocational effectiveness, wise 
use of leisure, and ethical character.? These were 
to be given to the child, not as good things in 
themselves, but because they develop in him ca- 
pacities and abilities the better to discharge his 
social obligations. So widespread is this attitude 
towards education that already a number of scales 
have been devised to measure and test the results 
of instruction in these social outcomes. There 
are tests to measure civic habits,*® others to de- 

1“The Platoon School,” by Charles L. Spain, The Mac« 
millan Co., 1924. 

2 Bulletin No. 35, 1918, U. S. Bureau of Education. 


3-Chassell-Upton Citizenship Scale, Teachers College, Co« 
lumbia University. 


250 





y , 


FUTURE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 25! 


termine vocational fitness,* and even a general 
scale to measure individual and social behavior re- 
sulting from school instruction in such matters 
as health and accident prevention and other social 
attitudes and practices.° 

This emphasis upon the social significance of 


the school’s task followed naturally upon the 


sternly individualistic attitude towards education 


which marked our earlier schools. “Gradually 
there has come the conviction that the perpetuity 
of our democratic society depends upon a con- 
sciously developed means of carrying on our af- 
fairs as a group, in short upon a process of 
socialization in the schools. If we are to be- 


come efficient citizens in a society in which the 


| individual determines the policies of government, 


mal education. 


we must acquire knowledge socially valuable, gain 
insight and interest in our common problems, be 
practiced in thinking and solving these problems 

. . . We must learn to live together before we as 


individuals can gain fullness of life through for- 
99 6 


Important as this attitude is, it has in the past 


4Thurstone Vocational Guidance Tests, World Book Co., 
Yonkers, N 

5“A Scale for Measuring Individual and Social Behavior,” 
Public School Publishing Co., Bloomington, Ill. 

6 “Development of Method,’ by William A. Maddox, 
chapter in “Twenty-Five Years of American Education,” 
edited by I. L. Kandel, The Macmillan Co., 1924. 


252 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


been conceived far too narrowly. It has implied 
a ready made fairly static adult scheme of living 
for which children by proper doses of “social in- 
struction” might reasonably be prepared to play 
an efficient rdle. Such changes as might take 
place in this ordered society were all in the line 
of predictable progress, a progress expressed pri- 
marily in economic terms ; more wealth, more me- 
chanical invention, resulting in more widely dif- 
fused literacy and culture, and extension of our 
assumed enlightened civilization to the dark places 
of the earth. 

Recently, however, and especially since the war, 
the old faith in automatic progress has been 
shaken. We hear more and more talk of the me- 
chanical side of civilization outrunning the per- 
sonal capacities of those who are to work that 
civilization. We hear frequent expression of fear 
that the time may come when we shall have our 
immense complicated machinery of economic life 
with none at hand to work it. This forces our at- 
tention away from the problem of adapting the 
child to the static or so called progressing world 
about him, and raises the problem how to make 
a developing prime mover in progress out of the 
child himself. Dynamic, free and creative per- 
sonalities will be necessary if the vast social struc- 
tuire we are erecting is not to overwhelm us with 





FUTURE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 253 


its own weight. Such personalities are little likely 
to be produced by the older disciplinary school, or 
its modern counterpart, “the socially regimenting” 
school. The immense popularity of the conception 
of the “Robot” shows how sound instinct of the 
mass places discipline of and for itself at a dis- 
count. The great contribution of such educa- 
tional experiments as we have been discussing is 
that each to a greater or lesser extent aims to free 
the child from imposed tyrannies, whether of sub- 
ject matter or routine, and to permit him full play 
for personal development. The Dalton and Win- 
netka plans seek to free him from the necessity of 
observing identical progress with forty or forty- 
five other children of varying ability, and of fol- 
lowing closely a daily allotted task. The wise use 
of intelligence tests also works for the freeing of 
the individual by calling attention to his differ- 
ences and the necessity of adapting the course of 
study to his special needs. The work-study-play 
schools, through the systematic use of variety, seek 
to free the child from the close discipline of the 
single classroom, and to give him opportunity to 
test his powers at first hand in laboratory, play- 
ground and workshop. The Lincoln School pro- 
vides not only variety of program, but through 
scientific research is clearing the curriculum of 
the dead weight of unusable subject matter and 


254 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


content. Professor Collings advances still 
another step; he boldly abandons the course of 
study, and directs his efforts to helping children 
do better the normal and wholesome activities 
they naturally engage in anywhere. Such avow- 
edly free centers as the classes maintained by Miss 
Goodlander and Miss Irwin, the City and Coun- 
try and the Walden Schools, break through not 
only the traditional barriers of curriculum and 
program, but provide a new set up on the child’s 
own level of interest and understanding, rich in 
materials and opportunities for creative growth. 
In many of these experiments also, some attempt 
is made to apply the findings of modern psycho- 
logical research, which recognizes not only the 
profound differences in children’s mental capaci- 
ties, but also the necessity of freeing them emo- 
tionally, no less than physically, of all handicaps 
to complete functioning. 

While many of these freer principles are being 
taught in teacher training schools, and are here 
and there reflected in isolated classrooms, it is 
unlikely that we shall see their very rapid ex- 
tension in the public schools. We shall first have 
to multiply very greatly the number of these ex- 
periments and gain for them wider public knowl- 
edge and support. The obstacles against their 
general adoption seem indeed insurmountable. 


| 


| We have to deal not only with the dead weight 
- of inertia and tradition in the schools themselves, 
, complicated in too many places by the tug and 
. warfare of opposing political interests, but we 
have to reckon with a public that has no very 
| great measure of faith in what schools anywhere 
_ are trying to achieve. There is still a strong pop- 
ular notion that education, so called, is only “skin 
| deep,’ that the real lessons of life are learned not 
_from schoolmasters and books, but in the realities 
of the world outside. The school exists primarily 
as a necessary. disciplinary agent, divorced alike 
from the interests and needs of the child, and of 
the community it was designed to serve. 

The very appearance of the conventional 
schoolhouse testifies to the popular conception of 
its function. Those vast barrack like structures 
that fill our city streets, impersonally numbered 
P.S. 39 or 192, what are they but the visible 
embodiment of the disciplinary trend, differing 
ever so slightly in outward appearance from the 
armories of the military, or even the prisons. In- 
to these sterile masses of masonry we send the 
little child, straight from the intimate and easy 
associations of home and neighborhood living. 
He walks through the great iron gates, through 
the long stone court, through the heavy wooden 
door, down long corridors, past countless rooms. 


FUTURE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 255 





256 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


With him go a throng of other children, also of 
tender age. He and they are sorted out and 
placed in their little grooves in classroom 100, or 
203. In place of the vivid chatter of home, st- 
lence is enjoined, in place of eager activity, passive 
sitting, in place of the natural give and take be- 
tween himself and a comprehensible mother or 
father, he must yield obeisance to the teacher, and 
beyond her to the principal, and beyond the prin- 
cipal, to a still higher official, and so on through 
a whole superstructure of authority, all there to 
impose on him behavior that is strange, and tasks 
that have no meaning. 

Small wonder that we have such absurd an- 
titheses as school and society, or child and com- 
munity, when school and child and society are 
thus made mutually exclusive. The best of our 
educational experiments return to earlier and more 
simple ways. The little boy in Miss Goodland- 
er’s class who exclaimed, “I like this school, be- 


cause I know all about it and everybody in it,” 


voiced a need of childhood of very deep signifi- 
cance. In our haste to provide “learning” on a 


wholesale scale for the mass of children, we have > 


overlooked the very elements that make learning 


possible. Somehow or other we shall have to 


make school intelligible to the child, somehow 
make it merely another “home” where he may con- 





FUTURE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 257 


tinue the happy business of living and learning 
through living. 

This means, perhaps, that we shall have to mod- 
ify considerably our ambitious school building 
schemes, the erecting all over the land of mam- 
‘moth and magnificent mausoleums, with their 
finished equipment and standardized facilities. A 
‘wise friend recently remarked that rather than 
subject young children to the inhibitions of monu- 
mental masonry and overwhelming systems, it 
would be far better if “school” for the youngest 
ones especially were merely a pleasant room or 
two over a millinery shop. By this he did not 
mean that the child should be given fewer, but 
‘rather more opportunities on a plane that he can 
“understand, that he can manipulate and manage. 

To be sure such complete changes as we urge 
would not be cheaply acquired. We should have 
to exceed our present bare 2% of our national in- 
come now spent on schools. We might have to 
approach the 10% which ali budget experts agree 
should be spent on education. (What private in- 
dividual educating his children in private schools 
would be content with spending so small a pro- 
‘portion?) To make such sums available, we 
might have to hasten long needed changes in our 
taxing systems. We should also have to face the 
‘ire of the economists, or rather the economizers— 


258 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


(Pritchett and Co.). Our educational expendi- 
tures have indeed risen, although the increase has 
not been as rapid as that of other governmental 
activities, such as charities and corrections, or 
health and sanitation. Indeed a much smaller 
proportion of the tax dollar than formerly, is 
spent on education. Moreover while the school 
population has grown more rapidly than the total 
population, while modern communities demand 
additional and more costly facilities, especially for 
their high schools, the real cause of mounting edu- 
cational costs is the decreased purchasing power of 
the dollar. School expenditures for such years 
as 1918 or 1920, when corrected to conform to 
the purchasing power of money in 1913, show an 
actual decrease.’ | 

The popular notion dies hard that there is 
some unique relation between learning and disci- 
pline. Teachers who experiment with freer prac- 
tices have to contend not only with the moss 
grown prejudices of other pedagogues, but with 
the shocked disapproval of the parents of their 
pupils. At least in the beginning they meet with 
such opposition. Later, as the newer practices 
bear fruit, parents may become the most active 


7 See summary of report of Educational Finance Inquiry 
conducted by American Council of Education, contained in 
chapter on the United States in Educational Year Book, 
1924, The Macmillan Co. 


FUTURE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 259 


»rotagonists of more modern ways. The 
yarents of many children attending non-platoon 
schools in Detroit, have urged the extension of 
work-study-play schools to their districts; pa- 
‘ents who in the early days of Miss Pratt’s 
school withdrew their children because they did 
jot immediately learn to read and write, are now 
noving down into the neighborhood of the school 
n large numbers. 

_ The desire for fundamental education reform 
is evident both within school systems and without. 
Whole school systems, such as Winnetka and 
Gary are committed to the more liberalizing prin- 
ciples. The Dalton plan is making its way into 
many places formerly thought impervious to new 
doctrine. Although the actual number of “pro- 
pressive” schools and radical experimental centers 
is still small, modifications in line with their teach- 
ings are gradually finding their way into many 
school systems. As such ideas gain wider ac- 
ceptance we are likely to hear less about the dif- 
ficulty of applying them under public school con- 
ditions. Overcrowded buildings and classrooms, 
tundertrained teachers, meager equipment, and in- 
sufficient appropriations do seriously retard edu- 
cational progress. Serious as such physical handi- 
caps are, however, they are less an obstacle than 
the prevailing attitude towards education which 


260 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


exists in the minds of those who run our schools. 
Many of the experiments we have been discussing 
are being tried out under public auspices. All of 
them might be, and their number indefinitely in- 
creased, once the philosophy that underlies them 
was held to be valid. Signs are not wanting that 
this is actually taking place. There is a greater 
questioning as to the aims of education and the 
methods employed to realize these aims, in- 
formality in the classroom is no longer a com- 
plete anomaly, the center of interest is shifting 
from the teacher and the course of study to the 
child, and to him not as the enemy to be redeemed, 
but as a creative personality, capable of indefinite 
development. Taking the long look backward 
enables Ex-President Eliot of Harvard to say, 
“The progressive schools are increasing rapidly 
in number and influence, and the educational pub- 
lic is becoming more and more awake to their 
merits. They are to be the schools of the future 
both in America and Europe.” 











LIST OF EXPERIMENTAL AND PRO- 
GRESSIVE SCHOOLS 


(Supplied by Bureau of Educational Experiments, 
144 West 13th Street, New York City)? 


_ANTIOCH COLLEGE AND ANTIOCH ScHooL. Yellow 
Springs, O. 

Founded by Arthur E. Morgan of Dayton, O. 

Co-educational, Kindergarten through College. 
Literature available. 


BEAVER Country Day Scuoor. Brookline, Mass. 

| Eugene Randolph Smith, Principal. 

Co-educational, Kindergarten to College. 
Prospectus. 


BEAVER ScHooLt. 9 Beaver Place, Boston, Mass. 
Margaretta Voorhees, Principal. 

Co-educational Primary and Elementary 
Grades. Prospectus. 


Brooxsipe Scuoort. Upper Montclair, N. J. Anna 
B. Gannett, Principal. 
Founded by parents belonging to the Fairhope 
League. No Prospectus. 


1The Bureau in supplying this list stated that it is not 
up to date, and asks that those having information of more 
recent experiments write in about them. 
263 


264 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


Brookwoop WorkKERS’ CoLLEGE. Katonah, N. Y. 
A. J. Muste, Chairman. 
Co-educational enterprise for the young peo- 
ple of the industrial class. Present enroll- 
ment 18 to 35 years of age. 


Carson CoLLeGE. Flourtown, Pa. Elsa Ueland, 
President. 
Colony for orphan girls with special equipment 
and educational advantages. 
See, “What Keeps Children Well,” by Marot 


and Willets; also “Mother and Child,’ Aug., — 


1922, 


CuHEvy CHASE Country Day ScHoot. Chevy 
Chase, Md. Stanwood Cobb, Principal. 
Primary to College Entrance. 
Mr. Cobb was secretary and organizer of the 
Progressive Education Association. 


CHILDREN’s UNIVERSITY SCHOOL. 10 West 72nd 
Street, N. Y. Miss Helen Parkhurst, Di- 
rector. 

Model School of the Child Education Foun- 
dation. Montessori Class through High 
School. No prospectus. 

See, “The Dalton Laboratory Plan,” by Eve- 
lyn Dewey. E. P. Dutton, 1921. 

“Education on the Dalton Plan,” by Helen 
Parkhurst. E. P. Dutton, 1922. 


City AND Country ScHoort. 165 West 12th 
Street, N. Y. Caroline Pratt, Director. 
Three Years to Thirteen Years. 


APPENDIX 265 


Affiliated with The Bureau of Educational 
Experiments. 

See Bulletins Nos. 1, 3 and 8, Bureau of Edu- 
cational Experiments. 

Record of Group 6, City and Country School 
Bulletin, 1922. 

Experimental Practice in the City and Coun- 
try School, by Caroline Pratt, with a Record 
of Group VII, by Lulu Wright. E. P. Dut- 
ton, 1924. 


EpcEwoop ScHooL. Greenwich, Conn. Euphrosyne 
Langley, Principal. 
Kindergarten through High School. 
Affiliated with the Fairhope League. Brief 
prospectus available. 


EruicaL Cutture Scuoor. Central Park West 
and 63rd Street, N. Y. C. Dr. Franklin C. 
Lewis, Principal. 

Branch School conducted by Mabel R. Good- 
lander at 27 West 75th Street. 
Literature available. 


FairHopE SUMMER ScHooL. Greenwich, Conn. 
Marietta L. Johnson, Director. 

Summer normal course under the auspices 
of the Fairhope Educational Foundation. 
Classes of children for purposes of demon- 
stration. The Edgewood school buildings 
and grounds and the adjacent plant of Rose- 
mary Hall School are used. 


FarrRHOoPE OrGANIC ScHooL. Fairhope, Ala. Ma- 
rietta L. Johnson, Director. 


266 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


Kindergarten to College entrance. 

Some resident students admitted. 

See “Schools of To-morrow,” by John Dewey, 
Chap. II. E. P. Dutton, 1916. 


Francis Scorr Key Scuoort. Locust Point, Balti- 
more, Md. Persis Miller, Principal. 
A public school with special community serv- 
ice development. 
Used as a laboratory for mental hygiene 
studies by Dr. Adolph Meyer, Johns Hop- 
kins Department of Psychiatry. 


FRANCIS W. Parker ScuHoor. San Diego, Cal. 
Ethel Dummer Mintzer, Principal. 
Open air school with special features of equip- 
ment. Prospectus available. 


Gary Scuoors. Gary, Ind. Wm. E. Wirt, Supt. 

“The Gary Schools,” by Randolph Bourne. 
Houghton Mifflin Co. 

“Schools of To-morrow,” by John and Evelyn 
Dewey. E. P. Dutton, Chap. VII and IX. 

“The Platoon School,” by Chas. L. Spain. 
Macmillan, 1924. | 

Bibliography and_ bulletins may be secured 
from U. S. Bureau of Education. (Address 
Alice Barrows.) 


JUNion ELEMENTARY ScHooLt. Downers Grove, 
Ill. Lucia B. Morse, Principal. 
A laboratory school for little children, con-_ 
ducted by The Kindergarten Extension As- 
sociation. Lucia B. Morse, Director. 





APPENDIX 267 


Lincotn ScHoot oF TEACHERS COLLEGE. 425 
West t2ed Street, N. Y. C. Dr. Otis W. 
Caldwell, Director. 

Experimental school of the General Education 
Board. 

First Grade to College Entrance. 

Descriptive Booklet and bulletins available. 


Pusiic ScHoot No. 64. New York City. 

Public school experiment under joint aus- 
pices of City Board of Education and Pub- 
lic Education Association. Aims to develop 
model Health and Mental Hygiene Service 
for city schools. Elisabeth Irwin, Acting 
Principal. 


Loomis InstiruTE. Windsor, Conn. Nathaniel 
Horton Batchelder, Headmaster. 
High School age, prepares for business and 


college. 
Endowed, located on a farm. Prospectus avail- 
able. 
Manumit Scuoot. Pawling, N. Y. Henry R. 
Linville. 


School primarily for workers’ children, under 
control of Manumit Associates, a group of 
educators and labor representatives. 

Printed matter available. 


MERRILL-PALMER ScHOooL. Detroit, Mich. Edna 
White, Director. 
Girls—High School and College age. 
Endowed school for home-making arts and 
sciences. Conducts a nursery school for 


268 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD " 


children 2 to 6 years. Mrs. Helen T. 
Woolley in charge. | 
Tue Mopern ScuHoor. Stelton, N. J. 
Boarding and day school conducted by the 
Ferrer colony at Stelton. | 
Children from four years of age. No Prosi 
pectus. 


Moraine Park Scuoot., Dayton, Ohio. Frank 
D. Slutz, Principal. 
Founded by a parents’ association under the 
leadership of Arthur E. Morgan. Interest-— 
ing Prospectus and Year Book, 


Oak Lane Country Day Scuoor. Philadelphia. 
Francis M. Froelicher, Headmaster. 


Oyar VALLEY ScHooLt. Ojai, Calif. Edward Yeo- — 
mans, Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen. 


Op OrcHARD ScHoot. Leonia, N. J. Mrs. Anna 
G. Noyes, Principal. 
A home school for limited number of little 
children. 
Boarding and day pupils. Brief Prospectus. 


THE Park Scuoot. Liberty Heights, Baltimore, 
Md. E. M. Sipple, Headmaster. 
Founded and financied by a parents’ organiza- 
tion. 
Eugene Randolph Smith was the first principal. — 
Primary to College entrance. Prospectus 
available. 


THE Park ScuHoor. Jewett Avenue and Main 
_ Street, Buffalo, N. Y. Leslie Leland, Prin-— 
cipal. k 


Paige ah ie eS ~ 





APPENDIX 269 


Kindergarten to College. 

See, “A Peep Into the Educational Future,” 
by Dorothy Canfield Fisher. Outlook, Sept., 
IQI5. 

Prospectus available. 


| 
THE ParK ScHoot. Cleveland, Ohio. Mary Ham- 
mett Lewis, Principal. 
Organized by a group of parents. Mrs. Albert 
Dieevy, Lreas, 


Primary and Elementary Grades. 
: 


PETERBOROUGH SCHOOL. Peterborough, N. H. 
Originally a vacation school for the children of 
the Peterborough summer colony. 
See “A School in Action,” published by E. P. 
Dutton Co. 


PHorsE ANNA THORNE ScHoot. Bryn Mawr, 
Penna. Frances Browne, Director. 
Open-air school with special buildings and 
equipment. 
Used as a laboratory by the Bryn Mawr Col- 
lege Department of Education and of Psy- 
chology. Prospectus. 


PorTteR Rurat ScwHoor. Kirksville, Mo. Mrs. 
Marie Turner Harvey, Principal. 
See, “New Schools for Old,’ by Evelyn 
Dewey. E. P. Dutton, 1918. 
A rural school. First Grade to College Pre- 
paratory. 


Raymonp Rrorpan Scuoou. Highland, Ulster Co., 
N. Y. Raymond Riordan, Principal. 


270 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


An American adaption of the European “New | 
School” idea. 

Mr. Riordan was formerly instructor at Inter- | 
laken. 

Woods and camp life featured. 

Elementary and High School age. Prospectus | 
available. 


SCARBOROUGH ScHOOL. Scarborough-on-Hudson, 
N, Y. A. W. Sutherland, Principal. 
Organized by a parents’ association under the 
leadership of Mr. and Mrs. Frank A. Van- 
derlip. Prospectus available. 


SILVER Bay Scoot. Silver Bay, N. Y. CC. 
Michner, Pres. 
Boys’ boarding school, employing latest teach- 
ing methods. 
High School age. Prospectus. 


SuNsET Hitt Scuoor., 420 West 57th Street, 
Kansas City, Mo. Helen Ericson, Principal. 
Kindergarten to College. Prospectus available. 
_ THE Universtry Etementary Scoot. Colum- 
bia, Mo. 
Laboratory school of the University’s Depart- 
ment of Education. 
See, “Child Life and the Curriculum,” by 
Junius L. Merriam. 
See, “Schools of To-morrow,” by John and 
Evelyn Dewey, Chap. III. 


Unguowa Scoot. Bridgeport, Conn. Carl 
~ Churchill, Principal. 


Organized by a parents’ association. 


APPENDIX 271 


‘WALDEN ScHoot (formerly The Children’s 
School). 34 West 68th Street, N. Y. 
‘Margaret Pollitzer and Elizabeth Goldsmith, 
Directors. Margaret Naumburg, Educa- 
tional Adviser. 

Co-educational, 2 years through High School. 
Founded by Margaret Naumburg. Prospectus 
and printed matter available. 


WINNETKA Scuoots. Winnetka, Ill. Carleton W. 
Washburn, Supt. 
School system developed around progressive 
ideas. 
Printed matter available. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


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Baldwin, Bird T., and Stecher, Lorle: “The Psy- 
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Binet, A., and Simon T.: “The Development of In- 
telligence in Children.” Baltimore, Williams 
and Wilkins, 1916. 

Bobbit, F.: “The Curriculum.” Houghton Mifflin, 
1918. “What the Schools Teach and Might 
Teach.” Cleveland Educ. Survey, 1915. | 

Bonser, F. G.: “The Elementary School Curricu- 
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Bolton, F. E.: “Everyday Psychology for Teach- 
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Bureau of Educational Experiments, New York: 
Bulletins: “Playthings,” Revised, 1923. “Ani- 
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Teachers College Playground, Gregory School. 
“Stony Ford School,’ The Home School. “A 
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“School Records,” by Mary S. Marot. “A 
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272 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 273 


urnham, W. H.: “The Normal Mind,” D. Apple- 
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iourne, Randolph: “The Gary Schools,’ Hough- 
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‘aldwell, Otis W. and Courtis, S.: “Then and Now 

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thambers, Smith, and others: “Report of Experi- 
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‘harters, W. W.: “Curriculum Construction,” Mac- 
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“hildren’s Foundation: “The Child, His Nature and 
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‘oe, George A.: “Law and Freedom in the School,” 
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“ubberly, E. P.: “Public Education in the United 

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274. OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


Dewey, Evelyn: “The Dalton Plan,” E. P. Dutton, 
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1920. 

Freud, Sigmund: “A General Introduction to 
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Gesell, Arnold: “The Preschool Child,” Houghton 
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Green, Geo. H.: “Psychoanalysis in the Classroom,” 
G. P. Putnam, 1921. 

Gruenberg, Benjamin: “Outlines of Child Study,” 
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Hall, G. Stanley: “Aspects of Child Life,” Ginn 
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Hartman, Gertrude: “The Child and His School,” 
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Henderson, C. H.: “What Is It to be Educated 2” 
Houghton Mifflin, 1914. 

Hamaide, A.: “The Decroly Class,” tr. by Jean Lee 
Hunt, E. P. Dutton, 1924. 

Hill, Patty, Smith and others: “Experimental 
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Hinkle, Beatrice M.: “The Recreating of the In- 
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Hollingsworth, Leta: “Special Talents and De- 
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Hunt, Johnson, Lincoln: “Health Education and the 

“Nutrition Class,” E. P. Dutton, 1921. 





BIBLIOGRAPHY 275 


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i ‘The Century Co., 1923. 

fosic and Clark: “Brief Guide to the Project 

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ennings, Meyer, Watson, Thomas: “Suggestions 
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udd, C. H.: “Evolution of a Democratic School 
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fandel I. L.: Editor, “Twenty-five Years of Ameri- 
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Cilpatrick, W. H.: “The Project Method,” series 
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incoln School, Teachers College, New York: “De- 
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276 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


McCall, W. A.: “How to Measure in Education,” 
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McMillan, Margaret: “The Nursery School,’ 
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McMurray, Frank: “A School in Action,” E. P: 
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Meriam, J. L.: “Child Life and the Curriculum,” 
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Monroe, DeVoss, Kelly: “Educational Tests and 
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 277 


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278 OUR ENEMY THE CHILD 


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Briefer Course,” ‘Teachers College, 1913. 
“Education,” Macmillan, 1912. 

Watson, J. B.: “Psychology from the Standpoint 
of a Behaviorist,”’ Lippincott, 1918. “Be- 
haviorism, Lectures-in-Print,” People’s Insti- 
tute, 1925. 

Wells, H. G.: “Floor Games,” Small, Maynard and 
Co. “The Story of a Great Schoolmaster,” 
Macmillan, 1924. 

Woodrow H.: “Brightness and Dullness in Chil- 
dren,” J. Lippincott. 

Yeomans, Edward: “Shackled Youth,” Atlantic 
Monthly Press, 1922. : 

United States Bureau of Education, bulletins and 
reports. 





American 





INDEX 


A 
ability, mental (see also 
mental testing) 
abstractions, 80 
‘abstract symbols, 30 
academic work, 39; im- 
proves, 116, 148 
activities, free, 95, 158 
activity, adult conceived, 
144 
activities, constructive vs. 


destructive, 103; normal, 


254 
Adler, Felix, 126 
age: grouping by chrono- 
logical, 157; level, activi- 
ties according to, 153, 157 
America, 8, 63, 157 
Association of 
University Women, 54 
American Child Health Or- 
ganization, 54 


American Federation of 
Teachers, 248 ; 
American Federation of 


Women’s Clubs, 54 
analytic psychology, 151, 157 
anthropology, 4, 204 
apathy, 14 
arithmetic: in Dalton school, 

91; in Pratt school, 154, 

160 ff., 179 ff.; in work- 

study-play schools, 121; 

in Winnetka, 73; in vacuo, 

16, 121 
armories, 254 
art, 157 
assembly period, 39, 143 
automatons, 147 
authority, 114, 256 


B 


Baldwin, Bird T., 56, 50 

Barrows, Alice, 108 

Bassett, Rosa, 84 

behavior disorders, 53 

behavior psychology: ap- 
plied to curriculum mak- 
ing, 132; study by Gesell, 
56-58 

Binet-Simon, 61 

blocks, 6 

book learning, discouraged, 
149 

Boston, 61, 92 

Bourne, Randolph, 98, 99 

bright children, 34 

British, 83 

Brookwood, 243 

budget time, 45, 81 

building, capacity increased, 


I 
Burk, Frederick, 82 
Burris, W. P., 98 


Cc 


Caldwell, Otis W., 96, 134 

California State Normal 
School, 82 

Cane, Florence, ail ff. 

Chicago Board of Education, 


118 
child’s level, 149, 254 
child purposing, a régime of 
works, 44 
es s etieneay School, 


Children’s School, 202 ; 
Child Welfare Research 
Station, 55 


279 


280 


child’s will, 87 

child’s world; 148, 149 (also 
Ch. XI); must be child 
size, 202 

cities, demoralizing influ- 
ences of, 102; must be 
made fit for children, 
102 

City and Country School, 8, 
56, 254 (also Ch. X); art 
in, 157; books read in, 
199; care of room and ma- 
terials, 175; dancing, 176; 
discussions, 184 ff.; draw- 
ing and painting, 168-171; 
drill, 179; formal instruc- 
tion demanded, 153; games, 
163-165; group manage- 
ment, 174; geography, 155; 
language, 183; map mak- 
ing, 167-168; music work, 
179; pottery, 171; play 
with big materials, 165- 
166; reading, 182; science, 


194; shop-work, 173; 
spelling, 154, 181; store, 
155, 159-163, 171-173; 


stories, 194; trips, Ig1 ff.; 
vicarious living, too much 
of, 157 

civics, glorified, 7 

Clark, Ruth Swan, note, p. 
71 

civilization, 252 

classrooms, artificial at- 
mosphere of, 88 

classroom, cost of, 108 

class system, 82; social val- 
ues of, 84 

coercion, 66 

Collings, Ellsworth, 42, 253, 
Ch. IV; experiment with 
junior high school classes, 
42; course of study aban- 
doned, 43; a contribution 


INDEX 


to education, 47; projects, 
five types, 43; rural school 
experiment described, 43- 


44 
Columbia University, 61 
complexes, 7 
community life, 244 
compositions, of public 

school children, 230 ff.; of 

Walden school children, 

216 ff. 
conduct, 132-134 
conferences, III, 243 
contemporary life, studied by 

Rugg, 136 ff. 
course of study (see also 

curriculum), 16, 43, 204. 

253; changes effected by 

Lincoln School, 135 ff.; 

conventional course in Dal- 

ton schools, 89; dead wood 

in, 146; enriched, 77; 

modified, 79; subject di- 

visions of, 124 
Courtis, Stuart A., 117 
creative, 10; impulses, 2; 

creative individuals neces- 

sary, 252; creative tend- 

encies smothered, 147 
Cuba, 156 
curriculum: conduct curric- 

ulum, 132; enriched curric- 

ulum, 77; curricular re- 
form basic to social prog- 
ress, 137; dynamic cur- 
riculum defined by Rugg, 

137-138; curriculum “made 

on the spot,” 43; objective 

studies of, 135; scientific 

curriculum making, 8, 144; 

of secondary considera- 

tion, 149; subject basis 
objected to, 120; socializa- 
tion of, 7; varied as life, 

148 


INDEX 


D 


Dalton plan, 8, 244, 253, 259 
(also Ch. VII); child’s 
will enlisted, 88; existing 
curriculum accepted, 90; 
job cards, 88; laboratories, 
86; limitations of, 90-91; 
mass production methods 
abandoned, 86; popular in 
England, 83; step to edu- 
cational reform, 9I 

Dalton Society, 85 

day nurseries, 63 

ea schools, Ch. 

departmental teaching, 118- 


120 
desks, immovable, 149 
Detroit, 61, 259; platoon 
schools in, 109 
Department of Educational 
Research, 116 
Dewey, John, 100-101, 114, 


134, 209 
Dewey, Evelyn, 98 
discipline, 147, 253, 258; 


school an agent of, 255 
disciplinarians, 134 
drawing, 168; stereotyped, 13 
drill, 18; automatons result 
from, 147 
dull fellows, 12 
dull-normal, 34, 40, 79 
duplicate plan, 110 (see pla- 
toon, or work-study-play 
schools, Ch. VIII 


E 


early years, Ch. V (see also 
nursery schools), growing 
scientific interest in, 150; 
studies by Gesell, Bald- 
win, Johnson, 56-61 


281 


education: cost of, 258; ends 
of, 1, 125, 260; educational 
machine, 75; a new edu- 
cation for labor, Ch. XII; 
educational order, 8; ex- 
perimental study of re- 
form, 9; only “skin-deep,” 
254; stagnation in, 147; 
value of early pioneer, 101 

educative process, platoon 
schools a factor in, 114 

elimination of pupils, 76 

Eliot, Ex-President, 260 

emotional development, 41; 
emotional fixation, 7; emo- 
tional states, 53 

England: Dalton plan in, 83; 
Fisher act of 1918, 62; 
nursery schools in, 62, 63 

essentials, 97 

Ethical Culture School, 8, 
126 (also Ch. IX); 
Branch school, 131; exper- 
iment by Mabel Goodland- 
er, 129 ff.; high intellect- 
ual requirements of, 127; 
prevocational courses in, 
128 

Europe, 260 

exclusive use, 106 

excursions, 141, 142, 156 

experience, first hand in new 
schools; 149, 157; in Irwin 
classes, 35; in work-study- 
play schools, 105 

experimental education: ef- 
fect on community, 44; re- 
lated to radical movement, 


237 
F 


factory system and work- 
study-play schools, 119 
failure, fear of, 212 


282 


Fairhope, Ala., 124 

fears, 41, 53, 213 

feeling life, III 

Fincke, Mr. and Mrs. Wil- 
liam M., 243 

formal work, reduced, 130; 
demanded, 153, 203 

fractions, 25; research study 
of, 93 

freedom, 6, 202, 203; for, 
teachers, 140; real US. in- 
stitutional, 146: vs. “run- 
ning wild,” 149 


G 


“Gary Schools,” quoted, 97 

Gary schools, 8; character- 
istics of, 99-100 (see also 
work-study- play schools) 

geography, 155 

Gesell, Arnold, 54, 56-58 

cifted children, 79 

Goldenweiser, Alexander, 4, 


204 
Goldsmith, Elizabeth, 148 
Goodlander, Mabel, 129 ff., 
254, 256 
grading, chaos of, 78 
growth, education should 
meet needs of, 3, 134; 
physical, 59; relation to 
mental development, 61 


H 


habits, 7, 68, 132; formation, 
132; inventory of, 68, 132; 
habit maker, 68; social- 
moral, 68 

Harlem, 247 

Hartman, Gertrude, 10 

Hill, Patty, 61, 126, 132 


INDEX 


history, 46, 116, 135, 140 
holdovers, 40 
Hollingworth, Leta S., note 


P- 74 

home, limitations of, 64-65 

home life, school should pat- 
tern, 88 

Horace Mann, 8, 126 (Ch. 
IX); pedagogy, scientific 
studies in, 134; primary 
classes experimental, 132; 
Patty Hill’s experiment, 
132-134; traditional stand- 
ards upheld, 134 

dae capacity, increased, 
I 


I 


1.Q. (see also mental tést- 
ing) ; changing, 74; group- 
ing by, 34, 72, 79 

immobility, 12, 20, 134 

individual differences: cur- 
riculum to meet, 78; teach- 
ers aware of, 84 

individual instruction, Ch. 
VII (see Dalton plan, 
Winnetka plan); begin- 
ning of, 82; vs. mass in- 
struction, Q7; limitations 
of, 06-07 

infant damnation, 2 

informality, 260 

information, 4, 155, 156, 204 

inhibitions, 203 

Institute of Child Welfare 
Research, 61 

instruction without educa- 
tion, 215 

intelligence (see mental test- 
ing) ; claimed to be fixed, 
71; measurement of, 71; 


INDEX 


never defined, 72; rating, 
127 
initiative, 97 
instantaneous obedience, 66 
interest, artificial, 87 


intimacy, in Goodlander 
school, 131; in Irwin 
school, 34; lacking in 


Lincoln School, 145 
International Brotherhood of 

Painters, Paper Hangers, 

and Decorators, 248 
International Fur Workers, 


248 

International Ladies Gar- 
ment Workers’ Union, 248 

Towa, University of, 55 

Irwin, Elisabeth, 3, 78, 254 
(also Ch. IV); emotional 
development studied, 41; 
formal work reduced, 34; 
free activities, 39; proj- 
ects, 39; regimentation 
avoided, 37; obstacles cited 
by, 42 


J 


job cards, 88 

Johnson, Dr. Buford, 55, 60 

Johnson, Harriet, 54 

Johnson, Mrs. Marietta, 37, 
124 

junior high schools, 135; ex- 
we by Collings (Ch. 


K 


Kennedy, W. F., 112 

Kilpatrick, William H., 44, 
114, 121, 134 

Kimmins, C. W., 83 

kindergartens, 131, 132 


283 
L 


Labor, 10; new education 
for (Ch. XII); confer- 
ences with educators, 243; 
New York State Federa- 
tion’s program, 240; Manu- 
mit School, 243; Pioneer 
Youth, 245 ff. 

labor unions, list of those 
supporting Pioneer Youth, 
248, 249 

laboratories, 53, 86 

laggards, 75 

learning: different from 
teaching, 87; learning and 
discipline, 258; real learn- 
ing impossible, 77; proc- 
ess, 3, 77; wholesale, 
256 

Lewis, Supt., 127, 130 

Lieberman, Joshua, 248 

Lincoln School, 8, 96, 126, 
253 (Ch. IX) (see also 
curriculum) ; aims of, 134; 
assembly periods, 143; 
beautiful building, 145; 
Caldwell’s four principles, 
140; curricular reform, 
135 ff.; excursions, 142; 
great experiment to be 
made, 146; primary grades, 
140; Rugg’s experiments, 
135 ff.; student councils, 


144 
Lippmann, Walter, 74 
literacy, “bursting into,” 37 
ins Red School House,” 
load, balanced vs. peak, 
107 ff. 
London, 85; University of, 


3 
Los Angeles, 83 


284 INDEX 
Mc N 
McMillan, Margaret, 62, 63 Nation, The, 11 
national income, 257 
M National Association of 


Manhattan Trade School, 91 

Manumit, 243 

Marks, Louis, 78 

Massachusetts, State Health 
Department, 54 

mass education, 85, 123 

mass production, 123 

materials, 157; character- 
istic of newer schools, 5; 
creative use of, 6 

mausoleums, 257 

mental ability, grading ac- 
cording to, 79 

mental hygiene, 53 

mentally defective, 41, 79 

mental testing, uses of, Ch. 
VI; advantages claimed 
for, 71; curriculum dif- 
ferentiated, 78; limitations 
of, 72; overemphasis on 
“book learning” ability, 
73; multitude of tests, 
70; useful in grading pu- 
pils, 74; wise use of in 


P. S., 64, 78 
Merrill Palmer Nursery 
School, 61 


military precision, 18 
minimum essentials, 77, 92 
misfits, 40 

Modern School, 239 
money saving, 108 
Montanye, Edwin Y., 122 
Montgomery Co., Mo., 42 
monumental masonry, 254 
motor, children are, 152 
“multiple track,” 77 
multiple use, 99, 105, I10 
Muste, A. J., 243 


Child Development, 245 

National Education Associa- 
tion, 70, 250; Department 
of Superintendence of, 
III 

National Society for the 
Study of Education, 93 

natural impulses, creative, 2 

naughtiness, a _ therapeutic 
problem, 40 

Naumberg, Margaret, 148 

neuroses, 4I 

neurotic class, 34, 40, 79 

New Republic, The, 11 

New School for Social Re- 
search, 204 

New York Bureau of Edu- 
cational Experiments, 54, 


55, O1 

New York City, 8, 9, 33, 72, 
79, 110, 118, 126; Bureau 
of Child Hygiene, 55; De- 
part of Education, 33, 
7 

non-promotion, tragedy of, 


95 
normal children, 34, 790; no 
pig contemplated for, 


norms, 54 

nursery schools, 150 (also 
Ch. V), (see early years) ; 
in America, 63; advan- 
tages of, 65-67; in Eng- 
land, 61; growing number 
of, 54; child study in, 63; 
Merrill Palmer, 61; ques- 
tionnaire on, 54; New York 
Bureau of Educational 
Experiments, 61; Ruggle 


INDEX 


Street Day Nursery, 61; 
Teachers’ College, 61; 
Walden School, 61 


O 


Oakland, Calif., 77 
objective, 152 
Oklahoma, University of, 42, 


43 

Old Guard, 85 

original sin, 2 

O’Shea, M. V., 65 

O’Shea, Wm. J., note, p. 
21 


P 


paint, teaching children to, 
21 ff 

paintings, in Walden School, 
210 

Parker, George N., 33 

Parkhurst, Helen, 83 (see 
Ch. VIT) 

passive sitting, 255 

Pawling, 243, 246 

pedagogy, old school, 
scientific, 134 

Perrot: ©. ht 114 

Persian gentleman, I 

personality, free, creative, 
10 

personality patterns, 52 

personality traits, 53, 66 

Pesta, Rose A., 119 

Philadelphia, 122 

physical defects, 55 

pres and Patterson scales, 

I 

Pioneer Youth, 245 ff. 

Pittsburgh, 110, 112 

police duty, 13 

political opposition, 118 


59; 


285 
Pollitzer, Margaret, 148, 
202 
Portland, Ore., 108, 122 
platoon schools, 110 (see 


work-study-play, Ch. VIII) 

practice book, 93 

Pratt, Caroline, 148 ff., 259 

prefix words, 80 

preschool age, 54 (see early 
years, also nursery 
schools) 

prevocational, 128 

prisons, 203, 254 

Pritchett, Pres., 258 

program, daily, 37; in City 
and Country School, 153, 
156; in work-study-play 
schools, variety of, 203 

progress, 252, 259 

Progressive Education Asso- 
ciation, 10 

progressive schools, 259, 260 

project curriculum, 44 

projects, 39; types of, 43 

psychiatric examination, 33 

Psychiatric Research Foun- 
dation, 33 

psychoanalysis, 53 

Public School, 61, 63 

Public Education Associa- 
tion, 33 

Pueblo, 82 


R 


3 R’s, 34, 36, 153; mastered 
in new schools, 43, 139, 
148, 197 ff. 

radical movement, 237 

read, learn to, 35 

reading routine, 35 

recitation, abandoned in Dal- 
ton and Winnetka plans, 
85 


286 


fay 150; of group, VIII, 

158 ff. 

reform, obstacles to, 42 

reformers, educational, three 
kinds, 125 

régime, I4, 44 

regimentation, 37, 84 

repair man, educational, 77 

repeaters, 25 

research, 92, 253; modern 
psychological, 52, 60, 254; 
first hand, in Pratt school, 
152 

retardation, 76 

rigidity, 96 

Rice, Charles A., 122 

robot, 81, 253; socialized, 7 

Rossman, John G., 122 

Rugg, Harold, 135 ff. 

Ruggles Street Day Nurs- 
ery, OI 

Russell, Bertrand, 214 


S 


San Francisco State Normal 
School, 82 

scales (see mental testing), 
to measure elusive quali- 
ties, 70; to measure results 
of social instruction, 250; 
to measure classroom 
work, 70 

school: assemblies, 143; a 
disciplinary agent, 255; of 
the future, 250;  eight- 
hour day, 112; newer 
schools, characteristics of, 
149; private, 32, 126; sum- 
mer school, 112; school- 
house, appearance of, 254; 
palatial structures in Gary, 

schooling, 
of, 124 


popular distrust 


INDEX 


“Schools of To-morrow” 


(quoted), 100-101 
Schools of the Future, 241- 
242 
science, 205 ff. 
scores, 116; arithmetic, 116, 
154; reading, 154; history, 
116; geography, 116 
Search, P. W., 82 
self-education, 155 
self-expression, 3, 202; in 
Winnetka, 95 
self-instruction, in Winnetka, 


Q3 tt. 
Shaw, Bernard, 203 
silence, 114; dead, 20 
“sit up tall,” 12 
Skinner, Mabel, note, p. 72 
Slavson, R. S., 205 ff. 
social: social aims of edu- 


cation, 250; social con- 
tacts, 67; social democ- 
tracy, 7; social motive, 


250; new social order, 237; 
social functioning of Gary 
schools, 100; socially regi- 
menting, 253; social sci- 
ence pamphlets, 135; social 
studies, 135 

socialization, 67, 251; over- 
emphasized, 68 

society, 128 

Spain, Charles L., 109 

speeding up, 76; violates 
principle of growth, 37 

spelling, 154 

spontaneity, 20, 237 

Stelton, N. J., 2390 

streets and alleys, ws. school, 
102 

Stationery store, 154, 155, 
159-163 

Stecher, Lorle W., 55, 590 

stereotyped, 38, 150, 158 

Stott, Leila V., 155, 158 


INDEX 


Streatham, 84 

student councils, 144 

Stuttgart, Ark., 114 

subjects, 3, 104; not taught 
by Collings, 43 

subject matter: children not 
dominated by, 152; ex- 
trinsic vs. intrinsic, I15; 


revolt against, 124; units 
of, 96, 121 om 
subjective, 152; subjective 


difficulties, 203; subjective 
understanding, 203, 213 
symbols, teaching of, 35 


T 


talk, learning to, 38 

tax dollar, 258 

taxpayer, 90, 124 

teaching methods change lit- 
tle, 104 

_ Teachers College, 61, 69 

Teachers Union, 9, 147, 243 

teacher training schools, 254 

technicians, 125 

tests, 46, 116, 148, 154, 204; 
intelligence, 61, 157, 253 
(see also mental testing, 
scales) 

think, will to, 4 

thinking, in platoon schools, 


114 

time table, 76, 77, 87, 92 

tool subjects, 105, 120 

training vs. education, 60, 
155 

tyrannies, imposed, 253 


U 


unconscious, 214 

United States, Bureau of 
Education, 98, 108, III, 
117; Commissioner of Ed- 
ucation, III 


287 
V 


variety, systematic use of, 
Kags shee 
vicarious living, 157 


W 


Washburne, Carleton W., 
83 (see also individual in- 
struction; Winnetka) 

Walden School, 4, 8, 61, 254; 
aiso’ Cha! XI. a childs 
world, 202; analytic psy- 
chology affects, 151; an- 
thropology course, 204; 
creative work of children 
in, 210 ff., programs vary 
in, 204; science in, 205 ff.; 
real freedom in, 202; sub- 
jective understanding of 
children, 203, 213; writing 
of children in, 215 ff. 

War and education, 240 

Watson, Prof., 52 

Wells, 137 

West Virginia, 247 

Winnetka, 253, 259 (also Ch. 
VII) ; curricular research 
in, 92-93; fractions, 93; 
group activities, 95; limita- 
tions of, 96-97; similar to 
Dalton plan, 92; tool sub- 
jects, 92; practice books, 


03-94 

Wirt, William, 98, 102, 106 

work-study-play schools, 253, 
259, also Ch. VIII, adopted 
in 93 cities, 110; advan- 
tages of, 115; balanced ws. 
peak load, 106-107; Bourne 
on, 99-100; characteristics 
of, 99-100; Dewey on, 
100-101; educational pos- 
sibilities of, 114; equip- 


288 INDEX 


ment, lavish in, 98-99; jectives of, 112; opposi- 
freer than traditional tion to, 118 ff.; school 
schools, 114; “factory sys- desks, 105; unwilling tax- 
tem” in, 119; housing ca- payers, reasons for, 124; 
pacity increased, 108; im- Wirt’s philosophy, 106-107 
proves academic work, writing, of Walden school 
116; limitations of, I2I- children, 215 ff.; writing 
123; mass education in, period, 16 

123; modern curriculum write, nerve strain of learn- 
requires new school set- ing to, 35 

up, 105; money saving in, Yy 

108; multiple use, 99, 105, 


110; mechanization stage, Yale Psycho-Clinic, 58 


122; national conferences Yoyth Movement (junior), 
on, III; national commit- 244 


tees studying, III; no 

changes in curriculum, 7 
121; no changes in class- 

room teaching, 122; ob- dZangwill, Israel, 8 





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